Probably not what you think. My father was a wise and gracious man. He was a man of integrity and honor. He was also a man of insight. He noticed, when listening to unbelievers speak of Jesus, how well they all liked him. A closer look, however, revealed why. Unbelievers like Jesus because they don’t know Him. Instead they invest in Him their own favorite qualities and characteristics. Marxists love Jesus because they think He is a Marxist. Republicans love Jesus because they think He is a Republican. Everyone loves to dress Jesus up as a cheerleader for the home team.
Jesus, however, isn’t alone in getting this kind of treatment. Of late I have seen various social media pundits responding to intersectionality, critical race theory, churches violating social distancing rules, and riots in the streets not by suggesting that God’s Word says this about the situation or that applying Paul’s principle in Colossians would mean that about some event, but asking, WWRCD, what would RC do? And, much to the surprise of someone other than me, it turns out my father is the writer’s sock puppet.
My father was no man’s puppet, sock or otherwise. And he was full of surprises. Take for instance his dislike for government overreach. My father used to talk openly about the virtues of secession in our day. He was a limited government guy from the bottom of his loafers to the top of his perm. Which is exactly why I thought I would have his support when I turned 16. I told him that Uncle Sam expected me to register for the draft. I reminded him that that same uncle had sent soldiers into harm’s way more than half a dozen times into unlawful wars. I didn’t want to register because I didn’t want them enacting a draft, drafting me and sending me off to another Viet Nam.
“Son,” he said to me, “I want you to go to the post office and register for the draft. I understand, appreciate and agree with your fears. The good news, however, is that Uncle Sam isn’t commanding you to break God’s law by fighting an unjust war. He’s commanding you to give him your address. If a day comes when we need to defy your uncle, we’ll do it. But today is not that day.”
I didn’t like what I had to do, but I confess, he impressed me. A lot. He showed me the biblical pathway whereby I compromised nothing, endangered nothing, disobeyed neither my uncle nor my heavenly Father. It wasn’t what I expected. It was much better. He took my jingoistic passions and applied careful, biblical reasoning.
Of course, he might have been wrong. That is not the point. Either way I am asking that you stop. You are borrowing credibility you did not earn, like the purveyors of pseudepigrapha in the early church. You are claiming support you don’t really know that you have. You act as though you are honoring his memory when you dishonor it. You are confusing yourself with him, and worse, confusing him with Jesus. If you want to know what my father thought, I have good news. His thoughts are recorded in over 100 books and on thousands of hours of recordings. If you want to know what he would have thought, you’re out of luck. If you want to tell the world what he would have thought, you’re out of line. He’d tell you to knock it off.