Far Right

Daily writing prompt

What’s a word or phrase that annoys you?

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I used to be quite left wing in my political thinking. In fact, back when I was 18, I saw myself as a Trotskyite communist. But I had no love for any communist regime that ever existed. We thought that if Stalin hadn’t edged Trotsky out, the Soviet Union and the whole world might have become a wonderful place. Soon, I saw that our outlook was extremely naive.

Anyway, as time went on, I saw that capitalism just seems to work better, especially if it has a compassionate element to it. Even in my lifetime, I’ve seen communist and extreme socialist regimes move towards capitalism or moderate socialism. Things will be perfect when Jesus returns, but in the meantime, we’ll just need to do our best.

Anyway, I get irritated when anyone with conservative views is labelled “far right”, as if they’re Hitler supporters. I suppose that left-wing people get unfairly labelled too. We use terms like “politically correct” or “woke”. Every movement has its extremes and silly people. Maybe we focus in on these too much. I’m an evangelical Christian and evangelicalism has its fair share of silly or sinister people. But I wouldn’t want that to put people off following Jesus. And I’m pleased that I’ve spent the last 46 years attending evangelical churches. I would steer clear of some, but I think that most are fine. You do get people with extreme or peculiar views on this or that, but I would think that you’d get that in any movement.

And in politics, I’d like to think that when I vote, I have some awareness of the views and abilities of the individual candidates and that I don’t just lazily see them all as “goodies” and “baddies” based on how the media labels them.

In the next world, we’ll be able to separate all the “goodies” from the “baddies”. The thing is, God is so holy that in His eyes, we’re all baddies. But He does welcome those who repent and trust in Jesus. And though our progress towards perfection will always seem slow in this world, we will be perfect in heaven. And of course, I assume that the opposite happens in hell. Any apparent good that was in people will be gone – at least I hope so. I’d hate to think that nice people would be stuck there for eternity. I often listen to debates on hell, but it’s all too easy to drift away from Scripture and think in terms of what you would do if you were God. I much prefer to accept the simple facts as presented. Things might be more complex, but I’ll wait until the next world, where I might be in a position to know the facts rather than speculate.

Anyway, we shouldn’t spend so much time thinking of the next world that we ignore making this world a better place. Here are some songs on that theme:

And here are a couple of hymns about making the world a better place: