I am of two minds. It is of course true that the American Dream and Christian teaching are not the same thing. My first impulse is usually to sigh, roll my eyes, and mutter, straw man. Who thinks that they are the same, really? Then I remember that there are Christians who do, at least partially. Enough so that the David Platt's of the world should smack them around a bit, even if they themselves oversimplify in turn.
I am unusually fortunate in being spared the worst of evangelical excess, and thus overrate how reasonable we are. I raise the caution that many of the people who enjoy writing about the Church's falseness have their own cultural, political, and personal needs that they have little awareness of, driving them to be Great Deplorers. But they aren't making this stuff up out of nothing. Their unbalance may be closer to the reality than mine.
