Image: bowie15, iStockphoto
Image: bowie15, iStockphoto
The fire and brimstone, pulpit pounding, Bible thumping prognosticators had everything about America's approaching moral disaster correct, except for one thing: its source.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
I have to hand it to them, they knew what the heck they were talking about all this time. They claimed this disaster was going to happen and predicted these moments with astounding accuracy.
For decades they tried to tell us that the sky was falling, that the devils were walking among us, that the end of goodness was near. For years and years, they lamented the approaching devastation and tried to prepare us like faithful prophets do. They pounded their pulpits with ferocity and thumped their Bibles in wild histrionics, forecasting this country’s certain demise—and we didn’t listen. We rolled our eyes and dismissed them as out-of-touch, hyperbolic zealots whose hold on reality was tenuous at best.
And yet, they had it right all along, almost.
It turns out that nearly every single one of their raw-throated, brimstone-breathed prophecies were true:
- That the wolves would come in sheep’s clothing to devour the innocent.
- That there would be a twisting of the Scriptures to justify vile evil of every kind.
- That people would do what was right in their own eyes and make themselves into the very God they most worshiped.
- That money, power, and pride would be too seductive to avoid for far too many otherwise decent people.
- That the Church was in danger of being polluted to the point of irrelevance and death.
- That the least of these would be discarded and brutalized and erased.
- That good people would be preyed upon by opportunistic, sinful monsters.
These sage prognosticators had everything about the approaching moral disaster here correct, except for one thing: its source.
They neglected to predict the actual genesis of this great national decimation. Because it turns out, that it wouldn’t be the Gays or the Muslims or the Atheists or celebrities or street people or tattooed women or sexually-active teenagers, as they’d so foretold. It wouldn’t be transgender people lurking in bathrooms or brown-skinned criminals pouring over our borders or any of the countless culture war boogeymen they told us were hiding in the shadows to bring terror. No, the encroaching danger was a whole lot closer than all that.
For years the Christian Right has been warning us about Godless hordes coming to destroy America and it turns out this was true—it’s just that the words were autobiographical.
As a lifelong Christian, I’ve had a sick sense of déjà vu watching politicians professing to be followers of Jesus joyfully preparing to dismantle every program designed to care for the vulnerable and the hurting, seeing the way the powerful are being awarded greater power, watching empathy vanishing and hatred skyrocketing, witnessing Christ-followers embrace his antithesis.
I’ve heard this story a million times before, proclaimed on Sunday mornings from pulpits, unleashed in religious social media rants, and shouted through bullhorns on street corners. I knew this was coming—or at least I should have. We all should have. These conservative harbingers of catastrophe were absolutely right to warn us, and ironically they were the very ones they were warning us about. In the sickest kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, they were the corrupt plague of these days that they said would come.
It would be the preachers and the evangelists and the pewsitters discarding the heart of Jesus, perverting the words of the Bible for their agenda, jettisoning their calling for a high place overlooking the world from the halls of Congress. They would be the predatory false prophets they told us that we should like hell run from. These wayward disciples of Jesus would be the ones to betray him with a kiss and send him to a bloody, undignified end, all for a few coins and their souls.
Yes, the Christian Right was right, evil was going to run amok through America and terrorize the lives of ordinary people and make a mockery of God.
And that is what it is surely doing in these days.
I owe them an apology.
I should have believed them.
I once was blind, and now I see.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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