For Those of Us Facing Friendly Fire | Guest Post by Chris Wheeler
Toward a Christian Response to Political Activism
Beautiful Discipleship is a team sport. The Christian life was not designed to be lived alone. So, I’m honored to use this online space to introduce you to others who are thinking about challenging topics through the lens of God’s beauty. Today’s guest is
. We are both graduates of Moody Bible Institute and overlapped during our years there, but did not have the pleasure of becoming friends at the time. I stumbled on his newsletter and knew I had to ask him to share his words on political activism here.
Leading up to the primaries in my county, my fellow conservatives and I have seen everything from targeted, slanderous ads to intentional misinformation – all for the sake of taking down a Christian conservative candidate who hasn’t gone far enough.1 The sense from the no-compromise crowd is as follows: "We've tolerated your ambivalence long enough. If you don't crusade with us, you are severely deluded, passive enablers. Christians like you were the reason Hitler succeeded."
The last bit might seem overbearing, but it is literally the thesis of Eric Metaxas's recent book/documentary/speaking tour, Letter to the American Church. In his view, the weak Christians who allowed their churches to close during COVID-19, who don't preach on political topics every Sunday morning, and who don't actively engage in owning the libs, are “worse than useless RINOs”2 who will usher in hell on earth by their inaction.
My guess is that you could also list off a number of similar pugilists who are discipling folks in your own context, and you might (like me) have friends and family who either think well of them or actively promote their ideas as beneficial. And if you’re like me, you also might be plotting some kind of underground, internet-less bunker to just wait out 2024.
Here’s the problem with the bunker blueprints: Metaxas isn’t totally wrong about the need for Christians to fight against bad ideologies (although I would include his pseudo-religious ahistoricism among them). As a Christian, I have a responsibility to proclaim the Way of the Cross to those in my community who are considering the Way of Political Activism. The person I seek to love may not have anyone else in their lives who is tempering the catastrophism or tethering them to relationship or reality.
But how do I do that when every conversation feels like warfare?
Friendly fire (or fratricide) has a history as old as warfare itself, with records dating as far back as the War of the Roses and as recently as the Israel-Hamas war. It occurs primarily because of a variety of errors, including:
Errors of position, when troops are aiming at the enemy but hit their own.
Errors of misidentification, when troops are perceived to be an enemy.
Errors resulting from confusion, miscommunication, or recklessness under war conditions.
The casualties resulting from friendly fire are only the beginning of the problem. A 1996 study by LTC Thomas C. Owskey, USAF identifies dire consequences, including “loss of confidence in unit leadership, leader self-doubt and hesitation, loss of initiative and aggressiveness, oversupervision of units, disrupted operations, and a general degradation of cohesion and morale.”
Friendly fire might be a useful category to help us understand our political dilemmas. It recasts those we are tempted to consider “enemies” as actual allies. Also, it’s a category designed to contain incidents of human error, thus creating space for grace. But the problem is that usually those who lob bombs at “friendlies” are doing so with intention. From their perspective, this is not friendly fire. This is fragging.
Fragging (the deliberate attempted murder of a fellow soldier or commanding officer) was most prevalent during the waning years of the Vietnam War as the unpopularity of that war gained momentum. In fragging, you have determined that you are not on the side you used to be on anymore, or rather, that your allies have abandoned or betrayed you in some way. They are now the enemy.
In friendly fire, unintentional casualties cause morale to plummet. In fragging, morale has already plummeted. You are afraid and alone and confused. What you thought bound you to your comrades means nothing to the existential threat before you. You see no other option than to attack your former friends. At its core, this is a movement toward despair.
When the problem goes much deeper than unintentional aggression, we often attempt to use shared enemies or shared values as rallying points for unity. But is that really what a Christian ethic demands?
Jesus offers us a higher standard than common ground:
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them…. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:32, 35-36, ESV)
This is the fundamental principle of Christian political engagement. It requires not just kindness, but the necessary courage to uphold what’s true and just. In a nutshell, it’s Micah 6:8:
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
In every interaction we have, this is our directive: to speak up for what is right, and to do so from a heart of love. We do this when we are facing a friend or a foe, whether they are inadvertently wounding us or intentionally attacking us. When someone treats us like an enemy, we respond like a friend. It’s not “safe” by any measure. Doing so involves getting up close to someone who is lashing out, and placing ourselves directly in the line of fire. It also means entering war zones we would rather avoid, often stepping between battling parties in an effort to bring about clarity and peace. And we do so expecting nothing in return.
This means that mitigating friendly fire (or fragging) isn’t actually our goal. Rather, we seek to respond as Jesus did, in the face of conflict and insults, knowing full well that it wouldn’t stop His enemies from crucifying Him.
What might loving our enemies look like in our conversational battlegrounds this year? The following are a few ideas.
Remove Technological Impedances
Owskey draws a distinction between a reasonable use of technology and a reliance on it.
“… It is training and discipline, not technology, that will ultimately reduce fratricide. The best equipment, with untrained and undisciplined crews, cannot accomplish its mission.”
In friendly fire terms, “advancements” like social media reduce positive identification and situational awareness, while increasing range and lethality. Reaching into the heart of a person – the home of their loves – is impossible without a relationship, and relationships rely on proximity and shared experience.
In-person conversation is the most strategic use of our limited time, so we must first re-center the conversation within the context of the local community. This is, after all, what real friends do (as opposed to their Facebook equivalent). In a time when chaos, fear, and polarization threaten even the closest relational ties we have, true friendship might be our best way through.
“Friendship is, in fact, a vital key to any flourishing political order, for friendship is rooted in affection and a commitment to the good of the friend, which translates in the aggregate to a commitment to the common good. And friendship is necessarily local. One cannot be friends with a nation. One cannot be friends with the world. One can only be friends with persons...” (Mark Mitchell, co-founder of Front Porch Republic)
Set Clear Rules of Engagement
Before anything, pray. Metaxas’s hero, Bonhoeffer, gave this as a clear indication of spiritual love in Life Together, that it “will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ.” When we engage our enemies from a prayerless posture, we neglect our greatest resource, that which will turn our gaze from “am I saying the right things?” to trust in God.
Build trust. We don’t get to know someone for the sake of correcting their belief system or converting them to “our side.” We are seeking to love them as who they are now. “Being ready” when a certain topic comes up is not about checking off boxes but about being trustworthy, and that means showing up for everything, not just the political stuff.
Then, when politics does come up, do whatever is necessary to protect their dignity. The person you love is not the pundit they're listening to, so engage without the added stakes of an audience. Affirm areas of unity. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Question before you confront. Face issues side-by-side instead of facing off. The point of a truly Christian conversation is never to “own” anyone. As Bonhoeffer says:
“... I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes.” (from Life Together)
Metaxas has erroneously quoted Bonhoeffer as saying:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Setting aside for a moment that there’s no proof Bonhoeffer said this, we must also note that Christ used silence to great effect a number of times.3 Sometimes, the right thing is to remain silent. Other times, words are required. Always, love motivates and truth guides. And if you are actually in community with someone, there will be ample opportunity to speak and act.
Increase Situational Awareness
Quiet your own bias. Just because I’m pretty sure I disagree with someone doesn’t mean I know everything about them. What if I were to approach my conversation with genuine curiosity about them as a person, and how their belief system is an outgrowth of their life experience instead of merely indoctrination or hatred?
Know what you believe. You can't know everything, and it’s important to be open to having your mind changed about something. You will also rarely change anyone’s mind. But you can settle for yourself the decisions you will make (such as who you are voting for). If you have carefully considered the options, articulate your reasoning. If you haven't yet settled on a decision, admit it.
Insist on accuracy and context. Asking questions to confirm details – and going back to first-hand sources – is not second-guessing your friend's motives or intelligence. It's simply acknowledging that unbiased, exact information is difficult to find in our current media landscape. Instead of taking claims at face value, do some digging together. Doing so will better equip you both to make a moral judgment on a given situation.
What Now?
The biggest question I see about political engagement is how to do it. Sometimes this question disguises our inner reluctance to actually do the thing. We ask how as a stalling mechanism, not only because we’re worried about doing it right, but because we really don’t want to do it at all.
The skirmishes we face always carry the threat of becoming so intense as to fracture relationships with people that matter the most to us. We think that if we can avoid the issues entirely or at least control the situation, we will avoid that potentiality.
But in reality, deepening any relationship requires dealing with tough issues from the basis of mutual love and respect. We owe it to those around us to take those steps, whether we feel like we have all our conversational ducks in a row or not.
It seems appropriate that we let Bonhoeffer have the last word:
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” – this is the Scripture’s praise of life together under the Word. But now we can rightly interpret the words “in unity” and say, “for brethren to dwell together through Christ.” For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. “He is our peace.” Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.” (from Life Together)
Chris Wheeler is a writer and poet rooted in north-central Indiana, where he lives with his wife and five children in his childhood home. His work has been published in Think Christian, Fathom, Mockingbird, and The Rabbit Room, among others. He has also published two collections of poetry, Solace: Poems for the Broken Season (2020), and Masks & Mirrors (2023). He writes long-form work and poetry at Tethered Letters.
I can only speak to my experience as a conservative, but I'm aware that it isn't only those on the right dealing with this sort of thing.
“Republican In Name Only”
Matthew 26:62-64; 27:11-14; John 8:6; Isaiah 53:7
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