Conservatives (State & Church) Need Serpent Wisdom

By: Thomas F. Booher

Progressives can more easily embrace those to the left of them, because while they might not want X yet, they know that eventually they will. Such is the nature of Progressivism/leftward drift.

Conservatives on the other hand, basically put a stake in the ground and say, "Here I stand". The weak conservatives usually have their anchor dragged leftward by the ship of progressivism. Even the stronger conservatives can rarely tolerate those to their right, because that isn't where their "stake/anchor" is planted.

 
This applies in state and church government. If you are considered to be "breaking ranks" with conservatives by going to the right of them/speaking out against something they are not, you're cut loose from the conservatives or even disciplined by them. Meanwhile, the conservatives who lurch leftward are still able to converse with the conservatives they departed from, mainly because the conservatives don't see those to the left of them as a "threat" to their conservative orthodoxy.

 
But call a wolf a wolf while the sheep's clothing is still on, and watch what happens. You may well be treated like you are part of a conservative army stealthily lying under the cloak of darkness, inching up to a liberal city, and must act as one voice, in concert, to take the liberal city at night in one fell swoop. Then you, conservative zealot that you are, blow your horn 5 minutes before everyone was supposed to CHARGE (they promise you they were always, always on the brink of bringing down the punishment on the leftists, but YOU are the one who blew it and are the problem)!

 
The conservatives aren't creative and consider their rigidity a matter of righteousness. Being "wise as serpents" doesn't compute with them. Serpent wisdom wipes out dove innocence (Satan was a crafty serpent once and THAT didn't go well), so they follow the rulebooks religiously to their own hurt, forgetting that the call to be "wise as serpents" was given to those Christ was sending out like sheep among wolves, and to "beware of men" (Mt. 10:16). So these litigious conservatives confuse orderliness with godliness and faithfulness. They either cannot see that things have long been brought down into a street fight where all the general rules and decorum have been thrown out, or they do see that and are too afraid to take war-time maneuvers, or simply do not know how to do so. Conservatives lack serpent wisdom. 

 
We are in a war, within our own nations, between nations, and within our churches and between churches of various denominations. Civil conflict and world conflict at the same time in church and state. And up rises a Kevin DeYoung to tell us the cry of the hour is to be "CAREFUL" not "COURAGEOUS". Someone bravely belts out that bringing down charges on an Aimee Byrd or Greg Johnson is unseemly and untimely, and possibly technically violates some rule in some Book of Church Order. Politically, Biden asks China to quell Russia's uprising. He's a progressive, but would our conservatives do any better?

 
Matthew 16: Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed.

Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”
And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.”

But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the [f]doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.