The President of the United States thinks I'm a fool for following the way of Jesus. He thinks I'm an idiot for loving my enemies and for loving my neighbor as myself. He thinks I'm a schmuck for worshiping God instead of mammon.
In the words of the President of the United States, Christian beliefs are "bullshit" and Christians are "fools", "idiots", and "schmucks". There's already a public record of such comments from him, corroborated further in Michael Cohen's new book about Trump.
But my faith calls me to rise above his insults against me and my fellow Jesus-followers. As St Paul said: "We are fools for the sake of Christ..." (1 Corinthians 4:10)
But let's not be fools for the sake of Donald Trump.
Many Christians excuse Trump's gross disrespect of our faith by comparing him favorably to Cyrus, the non-believing king of Babylon who liberated the people of Israel from exile and restored them to freedom in Israel. They believe Trump is delivering Christianity from what they call a “war on religion” in America. In actuality, if there’s a war at all, it is one conducted by a fundamentalist Christian minority to impose their "religious freedom" to take away freedom from the majority of Americans, who want to live in a country where abortion is legal and where LGBTQI people are not discriminated against in public life. It’s a war that right-wing Christians really are waging against themselves: the harder they try to impose their religion on others, and the more subservient they are to Trump, the more Americans disaffiliate from their churches. This from Pew Research Center: "65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009."
But back to old Cyrus. Right-wing Christians celebrate Trump as his resurrection. But that’s only because their version of Christianity pays scant attention to the historical context of biblical texts.
Cyrus used the people of Israel for his own political purposes. They returned to their homeland to restore their temple in Jerusalem in exchange for being pawns of Babylon. Cyrus sent them home in order to defend the western flank of his empire.
Cyrus had an entirely transactional relationship with the Jewish religion. Just as Trump has an entirely transactional relationship with right-wing Christians. What is Trump getting out of the deal? He’s getting a subservient Christianity - a meek, obedient, anti-Jesus religion that anoints his agenda of corporate greed and disregard for the common good. For a mess of pottage, right-wing Christians have sold their religious inheritance to a man who insults all Christians and protects nobody's interests but his own.
And that points to another extremely troubling aspect of the comparison: Cyrus was a king. Right-wing Christians are celebrating Trump’s autocratic instincts. Democracy is in serious danger as Trump actively sows distrust and disorder in the voting process. Christians should remember that the Jews weren’t sent into exile in Egypt and Babylon by presidents voted into office in free and fair elections.
In this Babylonian bargain that right-wing Christians have made with Donald Trump, they get nothing of real value in return. Was it worth it to be allowed to discriminate against gay people, impose their opinions about abortion on others, and deny complete health care benefits to their employees? This seems like trivial tribute, hardly worth the resulting mass exodus of disgusted young people from their congregations. Unlike the Jews in Babylon, right-wing Christians built temples and churches all over the land, long before Trump came along. They already enjoyed the full religious freedom afforded to them by our Constitution.
Contingent as it was, the break the Jews got from Cyrus was a whole lot better than the one that right-wing Christians are getting from Trump. Endorsing an anti-Christian candidate in exchange for hallucinatory privileges? Now that’s the “art of the steal”!
But back to old Cyrus. Right-wing Christians celebrate Trump as his resurrection. But that’s only because their version of Christianity pays scant attention to the historical context of biblical texts.
Cyrus used the people of Israel for his own political purposes. They returned to their homeland to restore their temple in Jerusalem in exchange for being pawns of Babylon. Cyrus sent them home in order to defend the western flank of his empire.
Cyrus had an entirely transactional relationship with the Jewish religion. Just as Trump has an entirely transactional relationship with right-wing Christians. What is Trump getting out of the deal? He’s getting a subservient Christianity - a meek, obedient, anti-Jesus religion that anoints his agenda of corporate greed and disregard for the common good. For a mess of pottage, right-wing Christians have sold their religious inheritance to a man who insults all Christians and protects nobody's interests but his own.
And that points to another extremely troubling aspect of the comparison: Cyrus was a king. Right-wing Christians are celebrating Trump’s autocratic instincts. Democracy is in serious danger as Trump actively sows distrust and disorder in the voting process. Christians should remember that the Jews weren’t sent into exile in Egypt and Babylon by presidents voted into office in free and fair elections.
In this Babylonian bargain that right-wing Christians have made with Donald Trump, they get nothing of real value in return. Was it worth it to be allowed to discriminate against gay people, impose their opinions about abortion on others, and deny complete health care benefits to their employees? This seems like trivial tribute, hardly worth the resulting mass exodus of disgusted young people from their congregations. Unlike the Jews in Babylon, right-wing Christians built temples and churches all over the land, long before Trump came along. They already enjoyed the full religious freedom afforded to them by our Constitution.
Contingent as it was, the break the Jews got from Cyrus was a whole lot better than the one that right-wing Christians are getting from Trump. Endorsing an anti-Christian candidate in exchange for hallucinatory privileges? Now that’s the “art of the steal”!