Impeachment, Impatience, and Our Call to Follow Christ

By amazon Tuesday, November 26, 2019 Comment Edit

As you watch the impeachment hearings, think through whether remaining silent is going to hinder your gospel witness.

So we are well into the third impeachment proceedings of the United States in over a century. Regardless of your perspective, this is a momentous period in American history. Yet this brings with us, perhaps, an uncertainty about what to think or how to respond to it.

With impeccable timing, the initial round of public hearings ended just as Americans prepare to sit across the dinner table from friends and family for Thanksgiving, thereby ensuring that everyone will be sufficiently stocked with divisive political hot takes.

Yet more importantly, this issue is not going away anytime soon. If history is a judge, impeachment battles may stretch out for several months as hearings continue and it eventually moves to the Senate.

In other words, impeachment will continue to be a topic of conversation both in our homes and on social media for the weeks and months ahead. Given this timeframe and the stakes involved, you may be more than tempted to dive into the discussion whether in person or online.

Yet before you click post or let loose on your rant this Thanksgiving season or over the next few months, I think it’s a good time for a refresher course for how we should think about such divisive, controversial, and, most importantly, complex conversations. In these situations, I’d ask you to consider these two questions:

First, will this response hinder my gospel witness?

Oftentimes, we don’t notice when our neighbor defriends us on social media soon after that super political post. More common than we might think, Christians frequently don’t realize just how we close doors with their friends and neighbors because of how we unthinkingly engage on controversial subjects.

This doesn’t mean becoming a hermit or ...