For years I’ve struggled with how to say this…and to my many conservative friends and family, please know this is difficult. I love you and don’t want to lose you. But I feel this is important to say.
As someone who had all the “disobedience” spanked out of me many times daily by the age of 3, who was educated in church and the Christian school system from kindergarten through college, and who became a Christian school teacher in a suburb of Houston, TX in my early twenties, I have perpetuated this harm.
I appeal to you as someone who has come to realize the harm of this system of theology, white supremacy, and patriarchy.
The idea that our neighbor includes the immigrant, described in the parable about the Good Samaritan is paramount to the teachings of Jesus. When asked what the most important commandment was, Jesus replied “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Who is my neighbor?” the dude asked. And Jesus told the parable of this guy from a different culture who got robbed and beaten, lying helpless on the side of the road. The person whom they agreed was a good neighbor, cleaned him up, carried him to safety, and paid for his medical care. “Go and do likewise” Jesus said.
I grew up in fundamentalist and Evangelical churches. I have a minor in Biblical Studies from Biola University. I have memorized large chunks of the Bible, entire chapters and books. I have read it cover to cover. The idea that our government should enforce the teachings of any religion, such as the White Christian Nationalist teachings, Seven Mountain Mandates, and the policies put forth in Project 2025, are in complete opposition to the teachings of Jesus Christ as taught in the Bible.
Jesus taught us to love our neighbor, including those different from us, including “the foreigner”, including those we disagree with.
He would never have lied to bolster a story harming immigrants in order to bring attention to a group disdained by those who fear becoming a minority. Think “immigrants eating the pets.”
What does it matter if white people become a minority in the U.S. in a few years? It matters because we know how awful minorities are often treated here. Please think about that for a moment. Why does it matter that some people feel the need to say “Black Lives Matter”? It matters because we have shown, in so many ways, that they don’t, such as the lynching picnics that took place after church in the south not long ago, and the way they are still treated by law enforcement and others routinely today.
This is disgusting. And it’s the “Maga” slogan to return to something so toxic again. Was America great when it was lynching our citizens? Under Jim Crow? When women couldn’t vote or get a credit card or divorce a man who beat her up nightly? America has yet to become greater. We have a lot of demons to contend with. I’m contending with my own.
In 2016, when 81% of Evangelical Christians voted for a known sexual predator and misogynist who constantly spews hate and division, I left the Republican party and became an independent. We all heard him say “you can grab ’em by the p**sy”. It’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that 8 years later, even more Evangelical Christians support a man who has since been convicted of 34 felony counts and required to pay millions in reparations for the rape and defamation of one woman in addition to dozens of other women coming forward to say he also sexually assaulted them. He has displayed no knowledge or attempt at following the teachings of Jesus. 
Yet he sells this book for his own gain, which marries church and state. This is something that was foundational to our founding fathers to separate.
In the You Have Permission podcast with Dan Koch, on the episode called Bible Truths, Sanctified Common Sense, & Evangelical Instatrust, Heather Griffin says:
“Evangelicals that are more formed by fundamentalism tend to have this hyper confidence about their minds. That somehow their minds are less deformed by sin than their feelings… So Jerermiah 17, with “the heart is deceitful above all things” is used to police people that are talking about their feelings. The anthropology used to be more unified, so a problem with your feelings was also a problem with your mind.
“People disagreeing with sanctified common sense, which is of course clearly aligned with the Bible facts, is evidence that they must be deceived by their feelings. Which you never have to listen to. Feelings will deceive you…But then also lets the people in power in communities baptize their own anxieties as discernment.”
I’ve been on the receiving end of someone very close to me baptizing their own anxieties as discernment, which felt a lot like hate and judgment for the very difficult choices I was making at the most vulnerable and painful time in my life. That person’s sanctified common sense, based on their own interpretation of some ancient writings destroyed our relationship.
In an article for Relevant Magazine, David Norling writes:
“…when affirmations and negations are valued over contemplation and learning through practice is a fear-based, certainty-seeking, defensive version of Christianity that grows up in the place of a living, covenantal trust. A faith based on certainty is not only oxymoronic but also leads to arrogance, especially from those who wield religious authority.”
I used to live very securely in this certainty. I knew what was right and what was wrong, not just for me, but for everyone around me. It was an arrogant, harmful way to exist in the world. It harmed me and those around me, those closest to me.
I no longer call myself a Christian and I don’t want to be associated with a group who is causing so much harm to those they disagree with. Dehumanizing people because they come from a different country, or have a different sexual orientation, or see the world differently is not okay.
Dehumanizing people is how Hitler got so many nice Christian people to go along with mass genocide. I visited the town of Dachau, where Germany’s first concentration camp was. It was a chilling realization that there were nice, white Christians living within a few yards of where so many men, women, and children were being slaughtered.
Please vote, my friends. But think about where you would land on these issues if love, rather than power or assuaging your fears, was your top priority. Listen to the lived experience of the people you disagree with and explore the nuances rather than sticking to dogmatic talking points. Be curious as to why a large portion of people would come to such a drastically different view on any given issue than where you find yourself and explore other opinions and arguments.
devastated at the loss of something that could have been, but never was. Like a seed that sprouted, only to get scorched by the sun for lack of water. There wasn’t enough time or intention. I wasn’t brave, strong, or whole enough. You weren’t available or safe enough. What a tragedy. 
Instead we went to see the waves crash, and the surfers live.
