Our Social Media Post Got Me into Trouble!

Our social media team often pulls quotations from my blogs and posts them as graphics on our social media pages. Now, of course, a short one or two sentences pulled from the larger context of everything I said rarely fully conveys my thoughts on something. But it’s a great way to drive engagement on our pages and help people think about various issues. And sometimes it gets me into trouble!

Take, for example, a post our social media team did recently, quoting me as saying:

Our hope for now and eternity is in God, not in any man, party, or set of policies.

Now this is true—Jesus Christ is our only hope in life and death. It is he alone who saves, and he alone is sovereign over the affairs of men. It is he who raises leaders up and brings them down.

And, of course, it is also true that leaders, parties, and policies matter, and Christians should be involved in politics because those things matter for our lives, the lives of our neighbors, and the future.

Jesus Christ alone is the same yesterday, today, and forever and is perfectly just and merciful. He alone is worthy of our hope.

But it’s also true that we should never look to politics as our ultimate hope—politicians, parties, and policies come and go, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But Jesus Christ alone is the same yesterday, today, and forever and is perfectly just and merciful. He alone is worthy of our hope.

I’ve said something similar to the above over and over again. But that doesn’t stop people from misinterpreting the short quotation! In the comments section, people said things like:

I feel like you’re saying this because you know it’s the right thing to say, not because you actually believe it or live it, but I hope I’m wrong.

True. However the Republican platform honors God. The Democrat Party platform doesn’t.

Then why the posts [about the good things the Trump administration is doing, presumably] of the last few weeks, if you truly believe this?

Was Israel better off under King David or Ahab?

Yes, one can truly believe that Jesus is our only hope, while also believing that earthly rulers and the outcome of elections matters! That’s why we do what we can by voting, running for office (if God calls us to that), and so on (that’s our human responsibility), while trusting God with our lives here on earth and for eternity (God’s sovereignty over history).

And that’s why I’ve also said things like this post our social media team made from a quotation of mine:

We can and should praise God for his mercy in sparing us another term of rabidly pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ, and anti-freedom leaders.

But, of course, I got in trouble for that too! You just can’t please everyone. But I don’t try to please everyone—I wouldn’t be leading a ministry about biblical authority if that were my goal! My responsibility is to start with God’s Word and allow it to be the foundation for my thinking on creation, science, history, politics, and more. And if you do that, trust me, you’ll get into trouble on social media!

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.