Withstanding Scrutiny

To be an outspoken conservative on a secular American college campus today is to get noticed. You quickly become a lightning rod for ire and angst. Post-modern and neo-Marxist rhetoric is by definition adversarial, and you have supplied the needed adversary. All sorts of accusations will get leveled, if not explicitly, at least by assumption. Your ideas are tainted—they reflect misogyny, homophobia, elitism, racism, or maybe even just naïve idealism. You’re “on the wrong side of history.”

Being subjected to so much suspicion can be crippling. It feels deeply unfair to have to bear such a burden—which can express itself from the mundanity of internet comments to the betrayal of broken friendships.

I spent the last week of May touring Israel on an American Jewish Committee trip for US-Israeli relations. It was a fascinating time exploring the nuances and rich beauty of a place that everyone talks about but hardly anyone knows anything about. One of the many conversations that sticks in my memory is with a group of Hebrew University student leaders. We were discussing media portrayals of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and one girl became extremely animated, expressing her frustration at the absurdity that Israel is constantly under the eye of the world, with every military decision scrutinized, while terror groups like Hamas get sympathy without even being expected to follow the laws of war.

But then one of her colleagues leaned across the table and said, “But, you know what? All that pressure does force us to constantly examine ourselves to see if we’re living up to our ideals.”

I think there’s profound wisdom in that, and it applies to collegiate conservatism as well as the State of Israel. We have to examine ourselves to make sure that we really have engaged with every critique of our positions. Since we defend Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, we will never be fully worthy of them. And since our accusers are made in the image of God too, there’s going to be some wisdom to be gleaned from even impoverished and crippling worldviews.

The scrutiny can be withering. But let’s try to see it as a refining fire.