The Lure of the Left

What makes the left so appealing? I'm not talking politics primarily. Stay here though.

Politics and theology relate more than most either understand or admit. I started writing this and divided things into theology and politics, and then deleted. I had to add a third category at least, that is, culture. You might add social, which is different than the three, and might make a fourth. The social has to do with how we solve unequal results in economics. There is a conservative way of dealing with those consequences and a liberal way. I'm going to leave it at three with this discussion. I personally don't separate the three. I believe a consistent world view sees life the same politically, theologically, and culturally. I have noticed that political liberals are usually consistently liberal in every category. Not conservatives. With them we find a few combinations of the three:

Conservative politically, liberal theologically, and liberal culturally.
Conservative politically, conservative theologically, and liberal culturally.

I'd like to think about the second category.

I'm a blogger. I write blogs. I read blogs. When I read those in the second category and then look at who they quote and who they link in their left or right hand columns, I find that they WILL NOT (or at least very seldom) quote or link to cultural conservatives. If they quote them, they normally do so with disdain. Usually, however, they simply ignore the cultural conservative.

One of the things that caught my attention on this was that I noticed the regular linking and quoting of a young man who was once a member of our church. We had to fire him as a teacher because of a virulent, destructive behavioural problem that affected his performance in a major way. He was extremely immature. After we helped him a whole lot, he pushed the eject button and moved away, looking for the greener grass. After moving away he trashed the church we recommended to him in another state. A year later he is a blogger. He spends hours and hours doing it. Through his techniques of blogging, he has developed a following in a matter of months. Understand that he has done nothing practically to merit respect, but now he is linked on major evangelical and "fundamental" blogs. They like what he has to say. He is conservative theologically and liberal culturally. None of these people linking him know his immaturity, his sin, his novice status, his bad testimony, or his character deficiencies, but they like what he writes on his blog, so he is a favorite. Culturally conservative men with good character and a history of faithfulness to God would never be quoted or linked by these evangelicals and "fundamentalists," but this young guy is. He takes the hottest cultural positions---booze OK, dancing OK, immodesty OK, most television and movies OK, and to him music is essentially amoral. He hardly misses a favored cultural liberalism among those theologically conservative. For that, he is mightily rewarded in blogdom. Even those who don't side with him, in every one of these cultural leftisms, will include him at their table. He has the compromise to make the connection.

I'm using this just as an example. I think it only represents something consistently occurring. This brings me to that original question.

What makes the cultural left so appealing? I added a word, but this was where I was always heading. Cultural liberalism. One could call the cultural left the lustful left. We all are allured by the dark side. It's fun. It feels good. It's easy. It actually allows a conservative either politically or theologically to fit into the world. You can get acceptance here (cultural liberalism) on earth and still get heaven (theological conservatism).

How do they justify all this? One interesting and amazing feature is that these guys often like to identify themselves with the Puritans and Spurgeon. Of course, the latter were cultural conservatives too. But it doesn't matter, "they're dead, so let's use them." They scoff at cultural conservatives like the apostates in 2 Peter 3, mocking while they walk after their own lusts, making space for their lifestyles. They don't argue Scripturally on these issues. They use mockery and ridicule, which are often effective, you may have noticed. The cultural liberal calls this unity. They say we shouldn't divide on cultural issues, only theological. They say that these cultural issues are second or third tier, so that those who separate on these issues are misguided and divisive. The cultural separatists, often called personal separatists, especially are spoiling their fun, what they call liberty to make it sound like something theological.

Much more could be said, but I understand the lure of the cultural left. I'm not going their way, but many, many are and in droves. My own opinion is that this is the major tool of apostasy today, this separation of theology from culture. The next generation of cultural liberals are theological ones.