In his second letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul spent considerable time confronting a problem that had taken root among some believers: their dismissive attitude toward him. It may be difficult for modern Christians to imagine, but Paul was not universally admired during his earthly ministry. The issue was not merely his earlier persecution of the church before his conversion. Rather, it was the old and stubborn sin of pride persuading some in Corinth that Paul was forceful on paper but ineffective when discipline was required in person.
By the humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am “timid” when face to face with you, but “bold” toward you when away! I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
You are judging by appearances. If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do. So even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.
The phrase “You are judging by appearances” is sometimes rendered as “You are looking at the surface of things,” or in similar language. The wording may vary, but the warning does not. Paul was calling out a mindset that prizes instant reaction over careful discernment. People who live this way are not truly acting with wisdom; they are merely reacting, often loudly, often emotionally, and usually to their own detriment.
That trap remains easy to fall into. We take events at face value, or surface value, and move immediately to outrage, affirmation, fear, or despair without pausing to examine what is really happening beneath the moment. It is much like fixating on an emotion without ever asking why that emotion has appeared in the first place. A frantic response may feel powerful, but it is frequently a shortcut born of intellectual laziness. The old saying applies: there is never time to do something right, but somehow there is always time to do it over.
The same dynamic is visible in politics, where public disillusionment often grows from the belief that the entire process has become shallow, performative, and unserious. To be fair, there is plenty of pettiness on every side, among both those who govern and those who merely comment. As Amy Curtis notes in her book Gaslight: How the Democratic Party Lost Its Mind to Radical Leftism and Abuses Voters in the Process, Texas Democrats not long ago left the state rather than vote on a congressional redistricting bill. At the grassroots level, X is filled with the remains of accounts that once posted constantly and furiously before discovering that outrage alone accomplishes little when it only echoes inside an already convinced audience.
Avoiding political and cultural burnout requires looking beyond the surface and asking what deeper incentives are driving events. For the Left, the argument goes, the ultimate pursuit is power and wealth, two forces that often move together. The hard Left remains committed to the belief that some version of communism, whatever label it is given, can succeed despite its repeated historical failures. Its adherents seem convinced they can avoid the disasters associated with Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim Jong Un, and others. Yet when confronted with the bloody record of those experiments, they often evade rather than answer. A softer but still deeply progressive version of this impulse seeks lasting political control through policies critics say are designed to expand dependency, including efforts tied to voting access for noncitizens and government benefits funded by an ever more burdened middle class.
A wise person treats rhetoric cautiously. As I noted recently regarding Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, progressive messaging can shift shape with remarkable speed, like something out of a 1950s alien invasion film. The surface argument changes; the foundation rarely does. Beneath the slogans is the same premise: government is the answer to society’s problems and the only institution truly qualified to correct them, whether those problems are real, exaggerated, or invented. In that worldview, individual responsibility, free enterprise, and morality shaped by Judeo-Christian principles are pushed aside in favor of bureaucracy. History offers a grim warning about where that road can lead, including mass suffering, starvation, and death when such systems are fully imposed.
The surface can be discouraging because shallowness is discouraging by nature. But when we take the time to look beneath it, the broader picture becomes clearer. Today’s cultural and political battles involve a great many people who still need steady, principled guidance before they are permanently branded by progressivism’s worst ideas. The work is not glamorous, and it is rarely easy. But the herd still needs wrangling, and now is no time to stop.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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