As Election Day looms, one Christian apologist — a former Muslim who once spent his days attacking Bible believers — is warning against “sacralizing” politics.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in all the polling data available, leading supporters of the two top presidential contenders to zealously embrace their candidates of choice.
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Interest in and an understanding of the importance of the electoral process — and the consequences that follow whoever is elected commander-in-chief Tuesday — is justifiable. But morphing that patriotic duty into something “religious,” Abdu Murray warned, is not.
Murray recently appeared on CBN’s “Faith vs. Culture,” where he made his case against the temptation amongst believers to misplace politics in their list of priorities.
“Politics is a means by which we can look at our moral values and apply them in a public way for the public good,” he said. “But here’s how I really have to orient myself. I think every believer in Christ has to ask themselves the following question: When you’re engaging with someone in a political conversation or a cultural or a social conversation, and that person disagrees with you, how do you see them?”
Murray went on to explain, “Do you equate their value as a person with the value of their ideas? Because if you do that, when you dismiss their ideas, you dismiss their value as well.”
That, the apologist said, is “exactly … what is going on right now with our cultural climate.”
An Ipsos survey from April found the vast majority of Americans — 81% — believe the country is more divided than it is united. And compared to a decade ago, 78% said the U.S. is less united now. Despite the large percentage of Americans believing the country is deeply divided, 69% of survey respondents said they believe most people in the country want the same things out of life.
With division at an all-time-high, Murray believes it’s the fallacious belief that politics can solve our problems that has led Americans to demonize and devalue one another.
But the Christian worldview — the commandments of Scripture — “does not allow” believers to denigrate the worth of others simply because of their perspectives or political persuasions.
“Other worldviews do allow for that,” said Murray. “Other worldviews — whether it’s Islam or other things — will equate the worth of a person with the value of their beliefs, which is why you have apostasy laws in some religious systems, where you can eliminate someone based on the ideas they hold, because the value of their ideas and the value of them as a person is equated. The Christian can’t do that; there’s no place in the Gospel where you are allowed to do such a thing.”
Referring to Genesis 1:27, which states human beings are are made “in the image of God,” Murray said Christians “have no right to devalue [an individual] as a person, even if I have the right to not value their idea. We can separate — and we’re obligated to separate — the value of the idea a person has from the value of the person themselves.”
That, though, is not something many practice in today’s vitriolic cultural climate.
“I mean, think about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump,” he said. “What an interesting phenomenon — and it’s a very sickening phenomenon — that after a shooting, there was actually a hashtag that the body count wasn’t one higher. We’ve never seen that before.”
He continued, “But also, we watch the Joe Biden debate and his performance … and I think people on the conservative side were gleefully hoping Joe Biden would embarrass himself because of cognitive decline. It’s one thing to be informed that he has that cognitive decline; it’s another thing to be glad about it. So we devalue the person, whether it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden or … Kamala Harris.”
You can watch our full conversation with Murray in the video above.
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