By Vanessa Selle
When someone says they are politically conservative, there is usually an assumption that they are white, Christian, homophobic, transphobic, love Donald Trump and do not want women to control their bodies.
For some conservatives, I’m sure this is true. It is a common opinion that the Republican Party has gone downhill after the Trump fiasco. There is more division between Democrats and Republicans than I have ever seen in my lifetime, which admittedly has not been super long, but still.
While I know that there are right-wing extremists who want to brand the LGBTQ community as demonic and people who have gotten abortions as murderers, I want to offer a different white, Christian conservative perspective.
I was raised in a Christian home, with conservative, business-owning parents. I was taught to work for what I want, and never take more than I earn. I was also taught the biblically natural way of the world. Marriage was made for union between one man and one woman. All life is precious, and life begins at conception.
These views and beliefs have strongly shaped who I am as a person, but I have often struggled to express these views in a way that makes it clear that while I do not agree with or support same-sex marriage, abortion, or other related topics, it does not mean I hate people who support or practice those things or want to strip them of their humanity.
On a personal level, these things are easy to support and believe. But on a political level, it gets a lot harder.
The political narrative today is all about tolerance. Live and let live, you do you. On the surface, this sounds great. But from a Christian perspective, that is not how I was taught to live. I was taught that there is a certain right way to live, and if there is someone around you living “wrongly”, to gently bring their ways to their attention and to steer them right.
Lately, however, the popular method of calling out wrong living is hate speech, shaming, and demonizing. It is no surprise that there is a huge miscommunication between Christians and the “secular” culture. Modern political Christians are more focused on pointing out the wrong they see in others than working on the wrong that is in themselves.
A book called “Every Body’s Story” by Branson Parler is an excellent example to explaining why there is often such a miscommunication between straight Christians and the secular world. The book explains that the different lens that each group sees the world through will naturally turn into different beliefs on what progress and good legislation is.
To be an accurate representation of Jesus on the political scale, we need to advocate for what is biblically right. Instead of shaming and demonizing people and groups when things go in the opposite direction, we need to stay on our course.
Instead of being the kind of conservative that focuses on having the right laws or the right people in place all the time, I want to be the kind of conservative who focuses on doing what I can for what I believe, but when the general population agrees with something else, to keep living how I know is right without hating or shaming others.
I believe that this is the best way to live out and help create positive change or cooperation, instead of fueling division like the current political atmosphere seems to be bent on doing.
