On Feb. 16, famous pastor and popular Christian author Rick Warren issued an apology and retracted his post from five days earlier that had generated a firestorm of controversy. Warren admitted that he “wrote poorly” when he cited Jesus being crucified “in the middle” between two thieves in John 19:18 as meaning that “If you’re looking for the real Jesus, not a caricature disfigured by partisan motivations, you’ll find him in the middle, not on either side.”
I apologize. I wrote poorly.
I don’t believe Jesus was a centrist. He stands far above it all. “My kingdom is not of this world…” Jn.18:36Jesus demands our total allegiance as the center of our lives.
— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) February 16, 2025
The original post generated an avalanche of criticism, including my take here. I pointed out that the two “thieves” were likely violent revolutionaries who held the same position, not two different sets of political views; and that Jesus was not a “middle” kind of guy, certainly not on sexual ethics or abortion, so that there was no basis for using this scripture text to argue that Jesus would hold the middle political position between the Democratic and Republican Parties. (READ MORE: No, Rick Warren, Jesus Crucified Between Two ‘Bandits’ Doesn’t Mean He’s in the Middle)
With all due respect, Warren’s apology still does not appear to get it. Here is my response to Rev. Warren:
Thank you for your apology and for retracting the original post, even if it took five days to do so and only after an avalanche of criticism.
But the issue wasn’t just that you presented Jesus as “in the middle” between two political parties when in fact “he stands far above it all.” Nor was anyone claiming that you were saying that Jesus should not be “the center of our lives.”
The real problem, which you don’t address in your mea culpa was that you made an exegetically indefensible claim about Scripture in order to claim divine authority for a politically indefensible position that the Democratic Party is no further from Jesus than the Republican Party.
A political party whose two main idols are virtually unlimited abortion and radical LGBTQ immorality is not just non-Christian but demonic. This includes the Democratic Party’s promotion of all things “transgender,” such as the chemical castration of children and allowing female-identifying males in female restrooms, sports, shelters, and prisons. (RELATED: Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation)
The same Party attempts to achieve the promotion of these two evil idols by employing other evils: lawfare (including the prosecution of pro-life protestors and medical staff who blow the whistle on “trans” procedures on minors), censorship of Christian views, the appointment of hard-left judges, and an illegal-immigration election scam.
So far as I can see, you haven’t changed that view of things. You just lost a scriptural text for supporting an outrageous political view that you still hold.
Let’s stop trying to be the “cool kids” on the political block by pretending that the party of the Hard Left is no worse than the party of the Moderate Right. Stop virtue-signaling to the political party that dominates so many of the levers of power in our country: the legacy news media, most social media, universities and colleges, the tech industry and other Fortune 500 companies, and the entertainment industry, all of whom express their allegiance to “reproductive rights” and “LGBTQ+ rights.”
Stop virtue-signaling by holding the “middle” ground politically so that you can look more aligned to Jesus on race, immigration, and poverty issues, as though the differences between the two parties were greatest and most harmful here, or that Jesus would have lined up more with the Democratic Party even on these matters. This is a false equivalence. Come out from the political sphere in which you “have your cake and eat it too” and bear the abuse that Jesus bore.
READ MORE from Robert Gagnon:
No, Rick Warren, Jesus Crucified Between Two ‘Bandits’ Doesn’t Mean He’s in the Middle
Trump’s Ban on Males in Female Sports: What It Does, Why It’s Justified, and the Left’s Outrage.
3 Major New Developments in Trump’s Battle Against Transgender Tyranny
The post Rick Warren’s Apology Leaves Much to Be Desired appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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