Guilty By Association

It is imperative as believers in Christ that we protect the credibiilty of our witness, that we are watchful of our associations - we don't want anything or anyone to damage our witness, and should always be cognizant of factors in our orbit that could cause people to think less of us
and by extension, our Savior.   The Bible talks about maintaining that good witness in 1st Peter chapter 2 (ESV):
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

For years, we have seen the operation of one particular organization that has influenced public policy through its use of large amounts of money to place nefarious characters in office and to stage protests that are certainly non-organic, in an effort to warp public opinion in a progressive direction.

And, the President of the United States is calling it out.  According to Axios: "President Trump called for billionaire George Soros and his son to face charges under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for supporting nationwide protests in a post on Truth Social..."  Using the type of language that we've come to expect from Trump, the President said, " "George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America," Trump wrote.  He said that Soros and those associated with him "have caused great damage to our Country!"

A recent Washington Stand article revealed the nature of some of the protests seen recently in Washington, DC, in response to federal action against crime in the nation's capital, stating, "these protests may not be at all organic, according to a new report, and may just be paid activists."  It goes on to say:

One such organization, the Free D.C. Project, held a protest recently in D.C. that drew a robust 150 people.  But, according to the Washington Stand article, "The Free D.C. Project, which also advocates statehood for D.C., encouraged people on social media to 'get loud' by going into the streets every night and banging pots and pans."  The article then traced the Soros connection, stating:

According to an analysis from the New York Post, the two organizations funding the Free D.C. Project — Community Change and Community Change Action — are themselves funded by left-wing “dark money.” Between 2020 and 2023, Community Change and Community Change Action received $12.6 million from Open Society Foundations and nearly $2 million from the Tides Foundation, both funded by Hungarian-born progressive billionaire George Soros, in addition to $5.6 million from the Arabella Advisors network.

Another group, Future Forward, gave $1 million to the "cause."  

So, Soros allegedly pays crowds to gin up public support for his pet causes.  In 2017, at The Stream, Kelly Kullberg wrote, in response to findings that Soros had rented Catholic and evangelical "mascots" to protest the nomination of Alabama's Jeff Sessions as Attorney General; she said:

The Soros network’s New America Foundation aptly refers to its sponsorship of religious mascots as “Rent-An-Evangelical.” Soros began funding Rev. Jim Wallis’s leftist journal Sojourners over a decade ago, to teach Biblical catchphrases and “the faith narrative” to previously secular Democrats, in the hope of peeling off Christian values voters.

In 2010, Wallis famously denied being on Soros’s payroll — until he was caught with the money. Richard Cizik, former policy head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), admitted it. Wallis and Cizik are busy teaching a new generation to use selective Bible quotes and buzzwords to push a post-American, globalist agenda. Socialists have long beguiled Christian citizens with “faith” optics and words ornamenting their projects.

Megan Basham of The Daily Wire has done excellent work in exposing the infiltration of progressive groups into Christian circles.  In a speech at Hillsdale College, according to its newspaper, The Daily Collegian, Basham said, “Evangelicals are simply America’s most powerful voting block,” adding, “So they don’t always win at the ballot box. But in most regions of the country, they represent the most significant hurdle to leftist power grabs.”  The article also related:

In response to this, many left-wing groups monetarily began to support Christian organizations with intentions of promoting their own agenda. They do this, Basham said, by manipulating pastors and leaders into thinking their beliefs are incongruent with the rest of society and that they should change what they believe.

Basham used the term “astroturf” to describe the inauthenticity of this movement, mentioning big-name pastors, authors, and publications, such as Christianity Today.

“It’s a form of manipulation that uses influential personalities, who do things like get interviews and publish essays claiming to represent a group in order to convince you that everyone else agrees that this is a reasonable, respectable opinion,” Basham said. “If you don’t want to be left alone, or thought unintelligent or heartless, even then you better adopt that opinion.”

And, of course, as I have related multiple times on this program, Soros is behind the National Immigration Forum, which is tied to the Evangelical Immigration Table, which attempts to influence Christians to adopt a certain view of immigration that is certainly questionable and at odds with a Biblical viewpoint.  Recently. a Southern Baptist agency released a statement that has been interpreted as offering a form of amnesty to illegal immigrants, which received widespread criticism and may have resulted in the resignation of the head of the agency.

These are reminders to all of us, whether individually, or collectively, to make sure that we are free from entanglements with entities or people who do not share our faith perspective.   The Bible speaks of being "unequally yoked," and we have to be so careful that our relationships, our associations, are free from influences that could harm our witness.

That doesn't mean that we are not to associate with the world - as Jesus prayed in John 17, that means that He would have to remove us from the world.  But, we should place ourselves in a position of influencing the world rather than the world's influence corrupting us.  We can easily be deceived when people attempt to use the Church in order to gain favor or to be seen as charitable, when we are are simply being used.  There was a sorceror in the book of Acts who wanted to be seen in a positive light, to the extent that he wanted to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit - he was called out for that.  We should possess pure motives, and not allow those with less-than-honorable intent to distract us in our clear mission.