Madison Cawthorn is a Christian who, can you believe it, has actually tried to convert people to Christianity. This is apparently a big story to the left-wing media, and absolutely shocking. Just imagine: a man responding to the “Great Commission” commanded by Jesus himself. Why, that’s downright un-Christian!
Cawthorn, a Republican, caught the media’s eye because he’d just won his House race in North Carolina and will, at 25, become the youngest congressman in modern history. He’d already been smeared as a “white supremacist,” at least partially because he visited Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest while traveling. It’s a good thing he didn’t, like millions of others, go see Auschwitz. Then he’d be a genocidal maniac.
While at Hitler’s retreat, Cawthorn “ruminated about the fact that he enjoyed time with his brother, even though he understood that terribly evil things had happened there,” reported commentator Andrea Widburg Wednesday. “Normal people would say, ‘That’s a thoughtful young man.’ Leftists, however, say, ‘white supremacist.’”
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Now they want to add Christian supremacist to the list. As the Daily Beast wrote Monday:
Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina Republican … has admitted he tried to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity. In an interview with Jewish Insider, the 25-year-old, who came under fire for selfies he took at Hitler’s vacation retreat in Germany, claimed he had converted “several Muslims to Christ” and several “culturally Jewish people.” “If all you are is friends with other Christians, then how are you ever going to lead somebody to Christ?” Cawthorn said. “If you’re not wanting to lead somebody to Christ, then you’re probably not really a Christian.”
…Cawthron [sic] added he has been unsuccessful in converting practicing Jews, but he has “switched a lot of, uh, you know, I guess, culturally Jewish people.”
Widburg, who’s Jewish, also took issue — with the Daily Beast. Cawthorn’s behavior “shows that he’s a good person,” she wrote. “A good Christian is called to spread the gospel,” she elaborated, “so Cawthorn does.”
Interestingly and almost never said, conversion is also the business of “good” ideologues. In fact, conversion is the practice of most of the world — and especially of the commentators criticizing Cawthorn.
Democrats want to convert others into Democrats, liberals want to convert others to liberalism, Muslims to Islam, Coca-Cola to Coke-fans, Ford to Ford-drivers, dairy farmers to milk-drinkers (“It does a body good”), and the United States Golf Association to golfers. And don’t many of the liberal commentators throwing shade on Cawthorn try to convert others to supporters of things such as universal healthcare, so-called “transgenderism,” and abortion?
Moreover, leftists will even convert by the metaphorical sword that is cancel-culture jihad: Accept our “woke” ideology or prepare for a destroyed reputation and career.
The truth is that many have things exactly backward: While they accept the conversion efforts we call “marketing” and don’t even recognize them as conversion attempts, they condemn Christian conversion endeavors even though they are, indisputably, motivationally superior.
That is to say, corporations try to convert you into customers for money; political parties usually try to convert you into members for power. While there can be exceptions, however, Christians generally derive neither money nor power from their proselytization; rather, they’re more often driven by a desire to spread Truth, free others from the bondage of sin, and, as Widburg puts it, “to give me insurance for that next life.” It’s often selfless.
In reality, people’s umbrage at Christian conversion efforts says much about them. For starters, obviously driving many of them is Christophobia. But there are deeper motivations as well.
Evident here is a lack of seriousness, for instance. People reflexively accept political conversion efforts perhaps, in part, because politics concerns organizing what even materialists believe in: things of this world.
Yet the wiser understand not only that the things of the next world are infinitely more important, but that one’s conception of “First Things” (theology, philosophy) affects his conception of secondary ones such as politics. Politics may be “downstream from culture” — but it’s even further downstream from faith.
Another issue, however, is that many view First Things as last things. Politics is real to them, as, again, it relates to matters affecting their worldly existence. But awash in materialism and relativism, too many moderns view faith as akin to a flavor of the day, a preference. “You wouldn’t try to convert me from chocolate to vanilla,” may be the thinking, “so why bother me about this? A person has a right to his tastes!”
Related to this, many moderns, especially Jewish people, view faith as akin to ethnicity. Under this mindset, seeking to convert someone to Christianity may be as asking a person to change from Hispanic to Anglo (though, somehow, it’s okay to “convert” a boy into a girl). But at bottom, faith is about beliefs, not birth.
Most of all, however, Christianity so often hits a nerve. Those opposed to it realize that if it’s right, they’re wrong — eternally wrong. Moreover, many understand instinctively that a Christianized society correlates with various phenomena, such as certain voting patterns, species of entertainment, and, most significantly, the Sexual Devolution’s termination. Put simply, they’re attached to their sin and know that a rising Christianity would threaten it.
So these libertines can tolerate the marketing of a disliked product or maybe, even, while gritting their teeth, a despised ideology. But what they can’t at all tolerate is the marketing of virtue, which Christianity represents. Married to vice, they fear mightily the divorce a holier civilization would bring.
