Lately for my son’s science studies we’ve been discussing modes of scientific discovery. The author of his textbook, John Mays, has a helpful scheme: a scientific theory is a mental model of the way some natural process works. What pleased me about Mays’ explanation was that he recognizes that the theory is prior to everything else. You don’t make observations and form hypotheses out of an empty mind; you start with assumptions and commitments. Then you form a hypothesis and carry out some experiments to see how much explanatory power your theory has, and refine it accordingly.

This has applications outside the realm of scientific endeavor. When reading this piece, for example, and trying to figure out what the hell Mr. David A. French is up to, one can ask: what is the man’s mental model of the commitments governing the behavior of—I use this odiously protean term under protest—“white evangelicals”? Does it, in fact, have explanatory power? Can it account for all the facts as we understand them?

Leaving aside whether the sociological descriptor of “honor/shame culture” is actually reflective of reality (and whether sociology itself is sufficient to ascribe motives or behavioral determinants to any particular human heart, much less millions of them); leaving aside the notable lack of definition for key terms like “shame” and “honor”; leaving aside whether the phenomena described can be accounted for by other means (the universal impulse towards tribalism? Plain old sin nature?); leaving aside the casual imputation of endemic racism to the variform blob of humanity denoted by “white evangelicals”; leaving aside the White Fragility–style kafkatrap (“You are all terribly unchristian people who respond with rage and violence to the smallest perceived slight!” “We are not!” “Aha! You see?”); leaving all that and more aside—

I admit it: when you casually group all white evangelicals together, when you make it clear you consider them all foolish idolaters, when you openly and without any visible compunction consign them to the ranks of the contemptible and stupid, I do take it personally. It actively enrages me, because you’re not just talking about some anonymous mass of humanity out there on the other side of the 24-hour news cycle. You’re talking about my people. You’re talking about my family, and in the South, there’s a compelling sense that your family is your family, and you’re stuck with them, so you are required to love, tolerate, and defend them, whether you like it or not.

Of course they are far from perfect. My own extended family probably serves as a decent microcosm of stereotypical Southern cultural pathologies. Dealing with them means dealing with multiple divorces, unwed mothers, deadbeat dads, and substance abuse. My family has adulterers and thieves and yes, even some verifiable racists. Many of them probably buy into at least one conspiracy theory. They say things sometimes that make me cringe. But even still, the particular filial piety of the South reigns: your family may drive you crazy; they may embarrass you; you may wound each other and fight with each other, but you don’t consign them to perdition and you certainly don’t gang up on them with outsiders.

But all this still fits Mr. David A. French’s interpretive framework: you insult my group, and I respond with outrage. “You have come against us. We will come against you.” So far its explanatory power remains unchallenged.

Consider: let us say you are a man, a decent Christian man, a sometime proponent of the benefits of honor culture from rural Kentucky. You’ve risen far, procured an Ivy League education, and worked hard to defend the liberties of your fellow Christ-followers and your fellow citizens. There you are, humming along, fighting the good fight, and suddenly the political party with which you have sometimes associated nominates an utter buffoon, and more than that, an objectively bad man. Not only that, but your friends and neighbors and compatriots seem to support him, too. What on earth? Your conscience drives you to speak. This isn’t right, fam. This is a bad choice. And in response some truly awful people do terrible things—you are inundated with hate mail. Insult and invective are hurled at you. Your personal details are made public and used nefariously to smear your good reputation. Worst of all, they threaten your family.

You are now afire with—something. Is it the righteousness of your cause? Or the outrage against your people? You devote everything—your time, your thought, your career—to speaking against the bad politician, but not only the bad politician. You spend years marshaling every resource to call out the wickedness of anyone remotely associated with bringing him to power. Yours, you are convinced, is the prophet’s calling, if a prophet can be said to contain an inner cauldron of simmering wrath cloaked in the language of detached cultural analysis. How dare they. How dare they. Shame on those terrible people who ruined everything and threatened my family. You have come against us. We will come against you. And every Sunday I’ll release a new scolding, just in time for you to read before church.

Is this what we mean by shame/honor culture? Is the theory sufficient to account for the facts as we understand them?

Probably I’m not being fair. Probably I’m just picking a really uncharitable interpretation and projecting my own issues as a result. You know how people do.

What if—and I know this sounds crazy but hear me out—what if we don’t only love and defend our families because they’re family and we’re stuck with them because they’re our tribe? What if we know and value these people, and understand that they—like every other group shoehorned into a general category for a convenient target of denigration—are more than their caricatures?

I see my family with the eyes of love, and see more than their flaws. They know what it is to struggle. They have endured grinding poverty and opioid addictions and children dying young from overdoses, sudden accidents, and disease. They’ve made lives for themselves and their children despite limited education, chronic illnesses, and husbands who drank up the paycheck. Members of my family have gone from high school dropout to a summa cum laude college degree on pure grit. Among the ranks of my “white evangelical” kin are those who endured multiple miscarriages and years of infertility only to open their homes and hearts to almost fifty foster children, finally adopting seven of them. They’ve served their families, churches, and communities with their labor as nurses, teachers, and builders. From my childhood these people have modeled for me humility, hard work, and how to endure tremendous suffering.

But most of all: among my family are people who preached the Gospel to me from the day I was born, both in deed and word. From my family I learned what it looks like to have someone you want desperately to be proud of do something foolish and wicked, and to respond with unconditional love and mercy and help picking up the pieces.

Some of my earliest memories are of my “white evangelical” parents standing up in prayer meeting to tell the story of God’s faithfulness and saving work in their hearts and lives.

They taught me that God is good and just and loving.

They taught me to read and learn and obey the Bible.

They taught me to trust Jesus as my savior because He is the only one who can save me from my wickedness and folly.

They are God’s gracious and providential gift to me. They are the reason I am not a hellbent pagan right now. So I owe them more than merely a sort of compelled fealty as members of my group. I owe them more than tolerance, more even than love. I owe them a debt I cannot begin to repay.

I owe them endless gratitude and respect and, yes, honor.

Is the theory sufficient to account for the facts as we understand them? Perhaps it is time to shift our interpretive framework a bit. Perhaps it is time to lay down the rhetorical weapons and seek a more excellent way. Perhaps we could consider what the book that purportedly governs us says about honor.

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” —Romans 12:9–10 ESV

“But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” —1 Corinthians 12:24–26 ESV

You don’t have to pretend we are perfect. Our hearts are as desperately wicked as yours. But these people of mine have genuine faith. They have tried to be good and faithful servants. They have, however imperfectly, stewarded their gifts and sorrows and struggles and limitations and by God’s grace they have managed to have children and grandchildren who are also faithful followers of Christ, who know how to trust Jesus with their lives when everything seems to be collapsing around them.

We are members together of one body. Do you think the firehose of calumnies is the best way to stir the body up to love and good works? Are public declarations of revulsion your best shot at outdoing one another in showing honor?

We are part of a story that is so much bigger than we are. The providence of God is infinitely more vast than one election among many in one nation among many. This cultural moment, like our lives, is a vapor. Our sins and foolishness matter, of course. So do our mercies. But across the world and down through the ages, how we love one another—not how righteous we are, not our politics, not our cultural peculiarities—how we love one another is how all will know to whom we belong.