Politics, Gangs and Cults

We forgive an individual of our in-group (“us”) for violating the group’s values but we harangue, harass, prosecute against a person of the out-group (“them”) for doing the same thing. In Christianity, we claim all sins are equal and similarly separate us from the presence of God. Yet, most Christian leaders, and their followers, are flagrantly opposed to homosexuality and other sexual sins (because those are committed by ‘them’—maybe ‘us’ in terms of pornography, etc.), but give a pass to greed, envy, quarreling, divisiveness which are also condemned in the scriptures but almost always included in our list of spiritual grievances if we’re being honest. Yet we remove pastors for adultery, homosexuality, even because of their stances on those situations if they’re not guilty of committing those sins. We do not remove pastors who demand higher salaries, or gripe about how big their rivals’ churches are or how much recognition their peers are getting relative to their own fame...or do nothing to contain conflicts within their congregations and seem to relish in the arguments because they retain a sense of power. But more so, the in-group versus out-group dynamic isn’t challenged because it threatens our sense of belonging. If we complain about people in our group, the rest of the group and the leaders of the group—especially if our complaint is about the leader—will oust us from the group because of disloyalty and doubts about your adherence to the group’s values (the main one seems to be ‘don’t say anything publicly about how bad we are’).

This code of conduct is true not only of religion, but also of cults and gangs. The latter groups attract individuals who need a place to belong. And belonging can overwhelm any sense of right/wrong or rationality about how the world works.

And thus, we have politicians publicly condoning malfeasance and maladministration by their group’s members whilst railing against their opponents. And when caught-out, they surrender to a defense of “What about...?”

This is not ‘loving your neighbor’ nor ‘loving your enemy’ as we are called to do. It is not holding ourselves and those we love to the highest standards, to the values we espouse. Otherwise, we are all hypocrites and we can and should all sing Eli’s “Hypocrite Song”