The Week That Was

In Which JD Vance Drove Progressive Christians Insane

JD Vance’s commonsensical observation…was like turning the lights on in a room full of cockroaches.

JD Vance is doing nothing more in the video below than producing a giant gob of common sense. He merely suggests, what any normal person knows, that we all live within a hierarchy of obligations. But the eyes of the so-called Christian left have been rolling back in their heads ever since he made these remarks. As it happens, though, their objections are utterly nonsensical in the face of, well, reality itself. What characterizes human existence is finitude. No human has unlimited time, unlimited resources, or unlimited relational capacity. We simply cannot avoid choosing between competing priorities.

All of the screeching insistence, coming from progressives, that the parable of the Good Samaritan should be understood without regard to the realities of human finitude, is at least farcical but more likely they intend their malevolence. I once leaped from my car to try to save an elderly woman who had been hit by another vehicle as she was crossing the road. I did that because I witnessed the accident and I was there. My proximity and availability imposed a moral obligation. But it simply does not follow that I am also obligated to try to rescue the whole world.

There is at least one other problem with the progressive Christian argument, and that is their implicit, often unexamined, assumption that we should make no meaningful distinctions between the moral obligations of individuals, churches, or governments. This assumption is manifestly false, from a biblical point of view, and the source of no end of social mischief.

It’s been a very surprising week, honestly. I’m totally used to leftish Christians who believe themselves virtuous for spending, or advocating spending, other people’s earnings. (The idea that confiscating another person’s labor might not actually comport with virtue never seems to put a damper on their appetite for moral grandstanding.) But JD Vance’s commonsensical observation, that someone’s moral obligations toward his own family and community are higher than his obligations to those who break the community’s laws, was like turning the lights on in a room full of cockroaches. So many ideologue Christians – so many – almost entirely on the left, suggesting that “love your neighbor as yourself” actually should be understood to mean that your own family can have no higher claim on your affections than a random lawbreaker. I have personally been told this week I’m going to hell for believing otherwise.😳

The ability of these ideologues to maintain their belief in such suicidal nonsense is breathtaking. Have they never had to choose how to divide their own limited resources between competing priorities? Have they no God-given natural affections? Have they never seen how a mother loves her own child? Do they have no loyalty to their friends? Do they admit to no priority obligations toward their own parents?

Jesus neither lived nor taught in the contextual vacuum these people would have us all believe. He was all too familiar with the kind of people who make high-minded and visible “commitments to God” at the expense of their actual obligation of love toward their own families. (e.g. Mark 7:9ff) According to Jesus, there is a phrase that describes this kind of moral skullduggery. It is “setting aside the commands of God”.

It’s not that hard. Sheesh.