Rick Warren Called Out for Twisting Scripture to Make Political Point: ‘You Should Be Embarrassed to Call Yourself a Pastor’

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of the best-selling “The Purpose-Driven Life,” is one of those preachers who more than occasionally tries to twist scripture to fit specific American political issues that it doesn’t pertain to.

Warren isn’t the worst, mind you; instead of insufferably woke, Warren tries to cast himself as a neither-here-nor-there moderate who will work with anyone. Which is fine at a personal level, but using the Bible to try to justify it is, well, unjustifiable.

As if you needed more reminding of this, he’s now under fire for using Jesus’ crucifixion as a metaphor for American politics — by pointing out what position Jesus’ cross was in.

The post on X referenced John 19:16-18, from the English Standard Version:

“So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.”

Warren sees something here that’s completely unbiblical, but he thought he’d it anyway: “The guys on both sides were thieves,” he wrote.

“If you’re looking for the #realJesus, not a caricature disfigured by partisan motivations, you’ll find him in the middle, not on either side.”

John 19:18 “They crucified Jesus with two others-one on each side & Jesus in the middle.”
The guys on both sides were thieves.

If you’re looking for the #realJesus, not a caricature disfigured by partisan motivations, you’ll find him in the middle, not on either side. pic.twitter.com/wYmLyayqsZ

— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) February 11, 2025

Now, it’s worth noting that the idea of a political “spectrum” — and a center in there — dates from nearly 1,800 years after Jesus’ death, where royalists sat on the right side of the French National Assembly and the radicals on the left side.

Of course, if this metaphor is truly biblical, it holds true throughout Christian history — which is to say that, when faced with French revolutionaries responsible for the Reign of Terror, the mass executions of holy men, and the stated goal of de-Christianizing all of France, Warren is saying that Jesus is to be found in the middle ground. (“Perhaps you can kill just half the priests you’re planning on drowning at Nantes, Mr. Jean-Baptiste Carrier? That’s where Jesus would be found, after all. Say, why are you dragging me by my elbow over toward that guillotine?”)

However, even if you want to point out that the left-right-center continuum has hung on long past the Jacobins’ shelf life and we’re not Marie Antoinette-ing anyone these days, it’s still a lousy take. To say there are no issues in American public life that have religious implications that can’t be solved by centrism is foolishness, and it doesn’t take one long to find more than a few:

Jesus would’ve been nowhere near the middle on abortion and transgender issues, just to name a few. Terrible and misleading take.

— Nick Hollingsworth (@HollingsworthN_) February 12, 2025

Moreover, there’s the issue of “authorial intent,” as evangelist Justin Peters noted:

This is, sadly, typical of Rick Warren’s approach to scripture. This would have been laughed out of biblical hermeneutics on day 1. Basic hermeneutics dictates that you strive for authorial intent, and this is definitively NOT the point the author was making. This is not only… https://t.co/PJCpLeooyS

— Justin Peters (@JustinPetersMin) February 12, 2025

And then there’s the idea of what the “middle” is, anyway. Jesus is an unchanging rock of truth. No political middle anywhere — and certainly not in America — is static. Ergo, Jesus — the Son of the unchanging, eternal Lord — is tied to something that changes by the week by one of America’s most prominent pastors:

This is an example of proof texting scripture so badly that you should be embarsssed to call yourself a pastor.

Jesus is not a moderate or “in the middle” when it comes to truth. To characterize him as such simply because of the placement of his cross is perverting an historical…

— Jenna Ellis 🐊 (@realJennaEllis) February 12, 2025

Psst the middle is always moving. You can’t find truth there. Truth doesn’t move.

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) February 12, 2025

No, truth doesn’t move — but Rick Warren can and will, depending on the moment. He’s a man who too often chases relevancy and feels as if his guiding prophet is not the Lord but Bob Dylan: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

There’s a salient point to be made in not making politics your god, because all human gods fail, but this certainly isn’t that point — because not only does it do just that (the middle is as much of a political position as anywhere, Pastor Warren), it also insinuates that God cannot be part of our politics.

Jesus’ own words prove the folly of this. From Matthew 6: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Not only are God and His Word supposed to permeate every area of our life and every decision we make — public and private — remember the question posed by the writer of Psalm 94: “Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.”

And in this case, we can take this quite literally: Wicked rulers condemn the most innocent among us, the unborn, to death. Rick Warren urges us to find some middle ground. Again, I ask: Condemn half the innocent to death?

Or maybe he should listen to the other prophet he seems to follow, Mr. Dylan, when he wrote “Property of Jesus” after being born again: “Say he’s out of step with reality as you try to test his nerve / Because he doesn’t pay tribute to the king that you serve.”

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