The data indicates Americans are simply wrong about their…

The data indicates Americans are simply wrong about their political opponents. We tend to believe they’re more extreme than they really are.

@davidfrenchjag from his article “A Critique of Tim Keller Reveals the Moral Devolution of the New Christian Right”

So, when I go to make these drawings I generally head over to YouTube so I can see the person I’m drawing speaking. The curious thing I find about religious leaders is that there are a number of people with fairly long videos declaring that “________ is a heretic.” Sometimes I watch them and I really believe, in almost all cases, the person with the claim is making a huge issue out of something that’s a secondary or tertiary issue. But I think it reveals a problem, like French points out here, with how we designate who we disagree with. How do we figure out if someone is part of “the left?” They are more “left” than me. Who is on the “right?” People more “right” than me. And in figuring out that designation, we assign those people the most extreme opinions and positions and get this - allow ourselves to be angry at them. We call it a righteous anger (and I’ve seen arguments where people classify their anger as a “loving anger”) and we give ourselves permission to unleash that anger in the public discourse.

Tim Keller, who I’ve drawn here many times, has unfortunately drawn a lot of this anger. I get pushback every time I draw him here. I know the Christian life isn’t a promise for comfort or fame or having people think highly of you; but it’s disheartening to me that the anger and malice toward this man comes not only from the world, but from fellow brothers and sisters.

It’s interesting to me that the mechanisms built by this world (social media, partisan news, entertainment, etc) encourage our anger and everything I read in our Bible encourages us to let go of anger and instead show love. Maybe an imperfect love displayed imperfectly is more fruitful than a perfect anger displayed in perfection? Maybe we should at least try it out? 🤷‍♂️