Wednesday, July 20th, my cell phone rang. A number I didn’t recognize showed up, and I answered. On the other end was Arren Kimbel-Sannit, a reporter with Montana Free Press in Helena. He wanted to know if I had time for an interview regarding J.D. Hall. I still want to know how he got my number.
Nevertheless, on September 13th, the result of that interview and Arren’s other investigations were published at MTFP in an article over 7,000 words long titled ‘The gospel – and the GOP – according to J.D. Hall.’
In this episode, I intend to talk through the quotes and references contained in this article related to platforms, persons, positions, and principles which I know to be important to my home state of Montana, my country America, and both myself and many of my friends and family across the U.S.
On the front end, I will confess to suspecting long ago the whole ugly business would end up here – that conservative Christian views on a wide array of issues being tied to Hall, an effort would be summarily made to decry all together as repressive, offensive, harsh, and ignorant.
Even in saying that, I hope and pray this is not the end. So long as important lessons can be learned from the cautionary tale of a power-drunk opportunist egomaniac, and of the consequences – both personal and political – of endorsement and acquiescence of his antics by turn, perhaps we will see a silver lining.
Make no mistake, Hall was enabled and inspired by the bad behavior of many – right, left, and center. And this is what comes of being most interested in “getting things done,” and leaving principles where the handling of truth and the folks who disagree are concerned on the threshing floor.
God’s grace in Christ Jesus can shine on those who have erred greatly here, both through sins of omission and commission, and I pray that it will. God surely will answer prayers for wisdom for them that heed the warning and ask the Lord for wisdom.
But I begin to feel in reading this article as though all parties concerned in American politics these days – even in remote Montana – need to be reminded that either the whole counsel of God is authoritative or else none of it is.
Moreover, and along similar lines, I would remind my fellow Montanans on all sides of this that Christ himself reserved his fiercest rebukes for hypocrites, those who only play-acted at having principles when the same applied to everyone but themselves and their allies. And such can indeed be found on all sides, as it turns out.
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