When Conservatives Fail to Conserve

Last updated on: March 17, 2022 at 2:53 pm by Grayson Gilbert

When Conservatives Fail to Conserve 2022-03-17T14:53:14-05:00 Grayson Gilbert

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I have little clue who Dave Rubin is, save a recent Twitter foray where I discovered several “conservative” publications who affirmed him and his homosexual partner in their recent adoption of two babies. There is much I could say on the sin of homosexuality and how this is fundamentally at odds with the biblical ethos, but I’ve already said much of that in previous writings. With that being said, this post will be a short one with some simple, general observations.

There is some truth to the “political homelessness” statements that have been made over recent years. Unfortunately, these kinds of statements have had no true virtue behind them, as they have often been made by those who masquerade as the sort of overly pious-sounding blowhards that end up voting blue in the end, as if they are free from the blood-stained hands of their pro-abort representatives. Beyond this, if we factor in the multitudinous sexual perversions being lauded as anything good, it should be relatively clear that faithful, Bible-believing Christians cannot rally behind such causes. So, when you have the Russell Moores and Tim Kellers of today who advocate for some nebulous neutral ground, which doesn’t exist, you know they’re full of it.

Yet here’s the rub: when you have “conservatives” who capitulate on these same fronts, one is left with a series of more difficult questions that invariably bring them back to square one, where there is little different in substance between conservatism and their more liberal peers. I would argue the same problem is prevalent within the Libertarian community, as the philosophical underpinnings of the party fall in line with Libertarian Free Will, which is antithetical to Scripture. In all of it, we’re left with a seemingly futile choice between any and all of them, namely, because they continue to blur the lines of distinction between each other and fail to subscribe to any objective criteria.

When the goal is merely to conserve for the sake of political expediency, rather than to go on the offensive against liberalism to actually preserve what’s good and right, you inevitably concede more and more ground. This isn’t much of a shocker for those who have been paying attention over the years. However, it does show us a fundamental problem with the philosophy behind conservatism, which is called mission drift. They may start with noble aspirations and intent, but as the “machine” continues to grow, the mission continues to shift away from its foundations.

In other words: the conservatives of today are only a few footsteps behind liberals. In essence, conservatism today is the liberalism of yesterday—and that’s the fundamental problem at hand. When organizations like Blaze and PragerU show support of Dave Rubin, it rings relatively hollow considering their attacks on Pete Buttigieg not too long ago. In full candor, there’s nothing conservative about this, given that it plainly presents a full-frontal hypocrisy on the very same issues they purported to uphold (i.e., traditional marriage and the family). This is, however, where I find the current Twitter outrage to be interesting: the outrage from many conservatives is not over the fundamental, unnatural union of two men which produced them pursuing surrogacy, but the surrogacy itself.

To my simple point at hand for the genuine Christian: secular conservatism is not all that different from secular liberalism, because their foundation is secularism. In that sense, we shouldn’t be all that surprised to find “conservative” institutions and people doing what they’re doing today, which is much the same as what they’ve been doing for years. Neither of them has grounded their beliefs, values, and political persuasions in the objective revelation of God’s Word, which inevitably means they’ll be guided by the subjective criteria of their respective ideological stances. More clearly, they’ll be guided much in the same way the judges of Israel were. Each man will do what is right in his own eyes.

We fool ourselves when we think they are on “our side,” when in reality they are on their own side. This in turn leads me to a word of caution: be wary of conservative pundits who “stick it to the libs” and win your affections. There is clearly an infatuation with celebrity culture within the church as it stands, but in this particular instance, there is an inherent risk in hitching one’s wagon to those who do not ground their beliefs in the Scriptures. The reason is simple enough: light doesn’t have fellowship with darkness.

We are to be the proverbial stick-in-the-mud, calling all men and women to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. We don’t concede ground on biblical truth. We don’t give a free pass to people who may be more politically expedient to us. We uphold the Bible’s unpopular and often intolerant stance on these issues, even if it so happens to get us blacklisted as persona non grata. Likewise, we adhere to a true form of conservatism, where the objective biblical stance on moral, social, and political issues is the one we uphold. In the end, we do it with grace and love, but we do so knowing that plainly stating the Bible’s position on things like homosexuality, the family unit, and more, is seen as ungraceful and unloving.

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