OPINION:
On Aug. 2, John Pavlovitz, a man who describes himself as “a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina,” posted an essay on Substack that was picked up by the establishment media and therefore went viral from coast to coast. It was titled, “No, Good People Don’t Still Support Him.”
The “him” the pastor was referring to was President Trump, and those he was accusing of being bad people were voters who still support the president and his policies.
Here’s part of what Mr. Pavlovitz said in his column: “[Donald Trump] is the very worst humanity has produced, a moral bottom-feeder without scruples or conscience or decency … and good people don’t align with this. … No, good people don’t spend their every waking day generating misery, stoking division, and causing suffering. And good people don’t defend people who do.”
Thus, we have one more “non-judgmental Christian” who fancies himself the exemplar of “love and tolerance,” telling us to hate anyone he deems hateful and not to tolerate anyone he has decided is intolerable.
Do these people not stop to think for a mere two seconds before they post such nonsense?
Month after month, we are subjected to their foolish self-refuting rants.
Every week, they tell us they will not tolerate our intolerance.
Every day, they preach about how they hate hateful people.
Not a minute goes by that they don’t judge everyone else for being too judgmental.
Their condemnation of others is endless, as they condemn everyone else for condemning.
Their lack of self-awareness is stunning. With every post, they prove they are little more than just one more dirty pot calling all the other kettles in the kitchen black.
In their arrogance, they just can’t seem to stop themselves.
With hateful red faces, they lecture us about “love.”
They rail against everyone who is religious while elevating their own dogma as the only good “religion.”
Their mantra is as predictable as the sunrise. Values clarification is better than moral absolutes. Celebrating vice somehow results in virtue. Inflaming racial animus will bring an end to racism. Subordinating one person’s right to live to another person’s right to choose will result in the protection of every person’s unalienable right to life.
The list goes on and on as they hoist themselves on their own petard.
They boast of freedom and yet live in bondage to their sins. They champion human rights while ignoring the rights of anyone whom they pigeonhole as being politically “right.” They say they’re pro-woman while denying that women are real. While claiming to be defenders of children, they butcher young boys and girls in their clinics. Pretending to be champions of democracy, they mock the rule of law.
Men like Mr. Pavlovitz are indeed what M. Scott Peck called “people of the lie.” It seems as if the road to hell is before them, and they enter its gates strutting with the confidence of an emperor with no clothes. When challenged, they belittle anyone who dares to shout out of their nakedness.
St. Paul spoke of “pastors” like this some 2,000 years ago when he wrote: “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of self … boastful, proud, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. To suit their own desires, they [will] gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn away from the truth.” (2 Timothy)
It is of the likes of Mr. Pavlovitz that C.S. Lewis also wrote about in his seminal work, “Mere Christianity”: “All your life long you are slowly turning … either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God … or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow [man]. … To be the one kind of creature is heaven. … To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy [and] rage. … Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
Mr. Pavlovitz and his tribe are duplicitous, smug and angry demagogues who are “corrupted in mind … and their folly is evident to all” (2 Timothy). The best thing we can do with pastors like this is ignore them. Thinking human beings should shun this man and all like him. Their words aren’t worth the five minutes it takes you to read them.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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