OPINION: When the good guys go bad

Life serves up heartaches and tragedies. Rejection and betrayal are very difficult. Less intense but still tough are the times when we “see the things we gave our life to broken,” to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling. When dreams die, it is a downer for us all.

It is no secret that a deeply personal relationship with Christ has transformed my life. I am very well aware of the bad conduct of some very bad people who claim to be Christians. I am very impressed by the Christian role in every anti-slavery, human rights, hunger, education, and science movement in history. This heart for service to the poor and disenfranchised is inspiring.

Currently, I am saddened to watch a nominally Christian advocacy group, Alaska Family Council, drift far away from Christian principles and the heart of the gospel. We Americans are scrappers, and we like to “win.” The values that Christ taught are very different than current cultural values. Christians are encouraged to be servants of all and to treat everyone with dignity and respect. We are encouraged to love our enemies and stand against evil.

The “family council movement” in our country was the vision of James Dobson, a respected psychologist. He is not a friend, but I talked to him several times. Dobson never said he wanted us to be a formally “Christian country,” after the pattern of England, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Hungary, Spain, France, etc. He wanted our culture to be the embodiment of the heart of the values that came out of the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

I rejoiced when the Family Council started here and played a small part in it. When I left public office in 2014, I joined the Alaska Family Council board to help out. After a year or two, I began to realize that the leadership of the Council had drifted unconsciously into the strategy of “fight fire with fire.” The attitude was that ‘the bad guys lie, misrepresent, cheat, etc., and thus we must fight fire with fire to win the cultural war.’ This is in complete contradiction to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

I called the staff of the National Family Council movement to ask about the tactics that are being applied locally and was assured that the national policy was to stick to Biblical values to be strictly ethical and to reflect the loving character of God.

The Alaska Family Council has not won significant support from local churches, and they do not have many loyal supporters in Juneau. Most legislator candidates do not even bother to return the Council’s questionnaire.

I admit that it is always attractive to win at all costs. In the Christian world, our battle is not so much with people but forces and aberrant powers that are not flesh and blood. People are not our enemy. Evil is. Ultimately, we will not win the contest with evil by stomping on people or using lies to win.

In my years on the Family Council board, I tried to explain that we (they) were not using God’s way to a better world, and we were demeaning the reputation of the loving God we thought we were serving. In addition, we were greatly limiting our effectiveness.

Realizing my failure to influence the board to turn back to God’s way, I resigned a year ago. In the past two months, I have met with two of my friends on the board to again raise the issue of ungodly conduct. They were pleasant but unmoved.

We all face the timeless question, “What shall we then do?” There is reason for hope for the Family Council. I suggest that those of us who believe in prayer should pray that the leadership of the Alaska Family Council would have “the eyes of their understanding be opened.” Pray that they get a new vision for fulfilling their mission by following Christ’s example.

The immediate issue now is the current “voters’ guide” from the Family Council. Some of the policy questions that are asked of candidates are often far from the purview of Biblical values and not relevant to the mission statement of the national organization. In addition, some statements are right out of the current “woke” playbook. The distortions, lack of facts, prejudice, personal vendettas, lack of due diligence, appeal to base emotions and lack of civility and common courtesy are sad and disappointing to me.

The net effect of this well-meaning but misleading and unfair publication is a loss of credibility and influence, as well as giving a bad impression of the God we want to glorify and serve with humility.

Let us hope and pray for a better future for the Alaska Family Council.

Fred Dyson served Alaska for 27 years as a representative, senator, and Anchorage Assemblyman. He is a former member of the Alaska Family Council board of directors.

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