Angry Christian Wants to Start Shooting His Neighbors

With the exception of abortion, the ontological impossibility of gay “marriage” and certain life issues, what never fails to impress me is how amazingly wrong so many representatives of the Right are on almost every issue of prudential judgment upon which they comment. From the greatness of nuking Hiroshima to the justice of the Iraq war to torture to our absolute moral obligation to vote for Romney to the genius of Ayn Rand to support for Maciel and Corapi when it had become obvious they were lying crooks to this latest lunatic call for secession, it is stunning how often the conservative anti-charism of discernment manages to make, not just the wrong call, but the massively wrong call.

Yeah. What America and the Church really need is a Beirut style Civil War prosecuted by red state Christian vigilantes pissed off because they lost a culture war issue. That will help. And it will certainly succeed, of course. Who could doubt it? And it will surely make the Church beloved and solidify it in the minds of the rising generation as the sacrament of the Prince of Peace.

Memo to crazy secessionists: This is not 1860. There will be no sectional division of the US over gay “marriage” or anything else. There will be a culture swiss-cheesed by differences over various culture war issues. A minority of the culture opposes gay marriage and *it is the supporters* who are the ones who emphatically see this as a fight for “liberty” since they see consent as the sole criterion of the Good. Proposing a shooting war (which is what “secession” means) over gay “marriage” is to propose shooting not some far off citizen of a Blue State, but your next-door neighbor. It means urban warfare and street to street fighting. And it means losing–fast–because your vigilante dream of restoring America through the exercise of Sacred Violence will meet swiftly with a police state that has been readying itself ever since 9/11 for a confrontation with internal enemies. You will fit that bill nicely if you decide to take up arms over this. And you will deserve it for murdering innocents in pursuit of your crazy dream of a Christian America imposed by force.

Jesus does not fight sin by crazy dreams of vigilantism. He fights with the cross. Christians should be the last ones advocating war on their neighbors here.