Is Your Heart Hardening Towards MAGA Supporters?

We’re often asked how to engage Christianly with the people in our lives whose beliefs and priorities are starkly different from our own. Phil, Skye, and Kaitlyn discuss what it looks like to acknowledge brokenness without losing our ability to foster compassion, empathy, and unity within our churches and communities.

Phil:I'm trying to understand the cruelty of MAGA. I'm trying to understand how Christians within the MAGA movement can countenance its cruelty.

Kaitlyn:I'm having a hard time, because it honestly just makes me really sad. And I also want to be careful because these arguments sound ridiculous to me. I'm both angry at them and think they're silly. But I also—there's moments in this conversation that have sounded to me like how the prophets talk about this, where it's just like worshiping idols blinds you to the truth. And it's not funny. It is upsetting. But it’s also really heartbreaking. I've said this on the podcast before, but I'm working really hard to try to find a way to maintain a posture of—I want to have righteous indignation at things that deserve it. Jesus did that. I also want to grieve the way God's people are so easily manipulated into believing and behaving wrongly. And I don't want to lose any sight of my own susceptibility to that. I'm aware also of what it is—at a much more personal level—for my greed and fear and self-protectiveness to lead me to not want to serve others in ways that are measured, let alone in ways that the gospel, I think, actually demands of individual Christians, which is reckless giving.

So I'm just sad. And I'm imagining there are people listening who have people close to them that say things like this. And I think the challenge for us is going to be to have some kind of tenderness left in us for the heartbreak we should have over this. And I've said this on the show before too, but I want to maintain this sense of heartbreak over the fact that people actually believe that the idols they're worshiping will save them, will protect them, will provide for them. They will not. And I want to maintain the softness to be able to be there for them when they don't. Because I would want that for me too.

I've had—in smaller scales than I imagine is happening in our country right now—I've had the experience of relying on something, and giving up things I shouldn't give up in order to serve that thing I thought would protect me, or make me feel secure, or make me look good to other people. And it didn’t do that. And I'm thankful for people who treated me kindly when those idols failed me. And I want to find some ability to be able to do that with others, even though sometimes reading this list of arguments hardens me to them. And sometimes in a way that is good—like, I think this is really deeply wrong. But I don't know that we are best served by ridiculing the arguments, even though sometimes they deserve it.

Skye:When I was in pastoral ministry, and we faced all kinds of various challenges in our congregation a motto that we used quite frequently in our team was: the mind justifies the decisions of the heart. And you can see how—using Kaitlyn’s idea—when an idol has captivated your heart, you will come up with any rationale to justify what you want. And that’s what these arguments sound a lot like to me. 

And it’s a check on all of us. If you have your political identity, or group, or tribe, or party, or whatever: if you cannot identify something that you think is grievously wrong with your candidate, or your tribe, or your group, and if you can’t identify anything that the other side has done correctly, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re trapped in an idolatrous understanding of these things. And allowing your affections for that group or identity to warp your mind in the way you justify things.