AOC AND HER CHARGE THAT CHRISTIANS ARE HYPOCRITES

Artist: Albert Popa

“Virtue-signaling” and shaming have become common ploys in the political arena. In effect, they convey the message that “I am virtuous, but you are a hypocrite and need to change.” This charge of “hypocrisy” has found a soft target among Christians who are no longer sure about what to believe. They want to be good and faithful but are being tossed about by many diverse charges.

AOC has been exploiting such charges to advance her political agenda:

·       “Sometimes, especially in this body, I feel as though if Christ himself walked through these doors and said what he said thousands of years ago ― that we should love our neighbor and our enemy, that we should welcome the stranger, fight for the least of us, that it is easier for a rich man - for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into a kingdom of heaven ― he would be maligned as a radical and rejected from these doors.” https://www.mrctv.org

AOC knows that if she succeeds in making the Christian feel ashamed, they might reconsider how they vote. However, she is wrong that we would reject the real Jesus when He returns. If we read the Bible, we will not be surprised by His return, since we already know Him. He even instructed His disciples to go into the world to teach everything that He had been teaching (Matthew 28:18-20), and we are the happy recipients of His teachings.

Instead, AOC is trying to preach another Jesus, one who has become popular in our present “progressive” political climate. This new Jesus not only accepts all people but also all forms of behavior. While Jesus did accept all who came to Him, He also required them to repent of their sins:

·       And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:2-5)

However, it earns us points if we can demonstrate that we are not sexist, racist, anti-LGBTQ, or anti-alien. No one wants to be regarded this way, certainly not Christians, and AOC knows this.

There is no argument at all about our mutual responsibility to love all others. However, AOC also believes that love requires us to accommodate their sinful behavior, like Mr. Minton who demanded that a hospital perform sex-change surgery on him. However, AOC wants to deprive hospitals and physicians the right to live by their faith and their conscience:

·       "My faith commands me to treat Mr. Minton as holy because he is sacred, because his life is sacred, because you are not to be denied anything that I am entitled to."

Yes, Minton is sacred, but his behaviors might not be. Several years ago, Barbara Walters had hosted a special on people who wanted to have their legs surgically removed, claiming that they were never intended to have them. However, surgeons understandably refused to administer this surgery.

However, many want to take away this kind of right in favor of coercion -- doctors forced to comply with all kinds of requests like euthanizing an elderly dependent parent, doing an abortion, or administering sex-change hormones to children. Perhaps this will also extend to euthanizing or castrating the mentally ill, and why not?

All of this raises broader questions about the nature of love. Does love require us to eliminate:

·       Police, government, prisons, and the army?

·       School suspensions and any punishment of students?

·       Any form of reprimand?

·       Parents who punish their children?

·       Employers of fire their employees?

·       Any prohibitions on any form of behavior?

I hope that this list looks ridiculous to you. It should! The Bible also endorses many forms of sanctions, even within the Church.

In the minds of many, including AOC, the “big tent” concept – protecting people of different persuasions so that they can gather safely and comfortably together -- no longer applies. Instead, conformity to an evolving secular religion is being militantly pursued at the expense of the “freedom of conscience and of religion.”