Yesterday I shared a bit about the stress and anxiety that I experience during the holiday season. Like I said, I try to take steps to mitigate those things. I try to get necessary rest, take vitamins and other meds, use a Happy Light, and try to focus my thoughts and energy on things that may redeem this season and create a positive from the negative.
I have to admit, Advent and Christmas are much easier for me to grasp the redemption stories. They are all about Christ and the preparation for us to receive Him.
Thanksgiving, however, poses a bit of a conundrum.
After all, the holiday seems to be an homage to gluttony and self-serving individualism. A far cry from the ideal that we say we celebrate. And, I think we may be hard pressed to find too many Native Americans who are thankful that their land and cultures were invaded and destroyed as a result of that first meal.
What, then, can we take from this particular holiday that brings life and blessing for everyone.
Let’s take a look at what we consider the first celebration with the Wampanoag and the Puritans. Maybe there are a couple take aways that can help make this holiday more meaningful.
One of the first things that jumps out at me is the contrast of how that feast was celebrated. Today, we usually gather with our own family. When I was growing up that included the extended family on my Mom’s side. We usually had about 20 or so. That is, until we kids grew up and started adding to the count with kids of our own. The point, though, was that we were isolated in our own, comfortable familial cocoon. Contrast that to how our forebears celebrated. Theirs was a community feast where everyone gathered to celebrate a successful harvest. They shared whatever they had with the everyone in both the Puritan community and the Native American community. Theirs reached beyond the doors of their houses and touched the lives of everyone. Each brought to the table what they had. There were most likely the Three Sisters of Maize, Squash, and Beans. The hunters supplied meat. Those who plied the waters brought fish.
The point is, it was a communal celebration, not a private one. Perhaps we may find something redemptive in that kind of sharing.
The were welcoming of the “Other.” This may be the biggest redemptive act of the entire holiday. As I was looking for something to help me wrap my head around this holiday, I got out my Book of Common Prayer and read the prayer for Thanksgiving. Part of that prayer is,
” Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name.”
Notice that the prayer asks God to make us Faithful Stewards in order to provide for our own needs as well as those of All Who Are In Need. The Native Americans did that very thing. For reasons of their own, they chose to help these “Others” who had sailed across the sea and landed in their backyard. The Native Americans were Faithful Stewards of Creator’s bounty. Note that the reason for this stewardship and sharing is to bring Glory to the Name of God.
Perhaps we, too, can not only be mindful of our stewardship of the resources we have been graced with, but can find ways to welcome and support those people who are looked upon as “Other” in our culture.
Maybe, just maybe, this holiday has some merit besides over-eating and falling asleep with a football game on the tube. Perhaps there is hope that God’s Good Grace may use this day for God’s Glory and our continued metamorphosis into the Image of God in Christ.
“Burn!” cried the mob as the book pyre blazed in the night. “Death to Infidels; heretics; free thinkers!”
Death? Books can die?
This sentiment seems to be making a resurgence in some parts of the world. I mean, it’s never really been far from us. The some churches still believes that Harry Potter poses an existential danger because of the whole witches and wizards thing. At other times books that some so-called authority deemed ‘subversive,’ (re. Doesn’t agree with my opinion), have been collected and set ablaze as a public rebuke to anyone who might harbor similar positions.
But, books are not ideas. They may, at best, be the vessels in which ideas travel. Ideas, though, are by their very nature untouchable. And, incurable.
Ideas are like a virus that spreads by getting inside of a person at a cellular level, invading and capturing the minds of those who are exposed to them.
Ideas become a part of a person’s DNA. They are, by nature, invasive.
Yet, not foreign.
Not harmful.
In fact, they can produce vitality and health in those who harbor them deep within their hearts and minds.
Ideas CANNOT be stopped by destroying the vessels that carry them.
Even if those vessels are living, breathing human beings.
That, too, has been tried. How many “heretics” have been burned; fed to lions; hanged; drowned?
And, yet, the ideas live on.
“But,” some say, “ideas can lead people astray! They can put a person in harm’s way!”
Astray? NO! Emphatically, NO! Ideas may open our minds to other ideas. They may cause our minds and hearts to grow 2 sizes larger. They may make us more empathetic. But, astray? Nuh uh.
Ideas are what make us humans in the first place. They are the engine that pushes us forward.
Yes, ideas can also give some people reason to hurt, maim, or destroy. But, it will also be an idea that counters those who would act in that way.
Ideas are like a virus. They will infect us. They will change us.
The question that remains is, how will we embody these ideas? How will we live in a world where Ideas live, thrive, and yes, Infect?
Some of you might wonder why I chose a verse about something that happened on the 5th of November when today is October 17.
There are methods to my madness.
As I’ve shared recently, I am doing the necessary Confirmation stuff in order to become a member of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. For the sake of today’s post: Episcopal = Anglican. i.e., Church of England. Why does that matter? Well, like any good student, when I began Confirmation I picked up one of the history texts I used in seminary. I wanted to review the roots and formation of the Anglican tradition. As I read through the timeline from Henry VIII through the 17th century, several interesting characters and events panned by in the fast-forward view I saw.
One such event was almost glossed over by the historian-author of my text. He wrote that in 1605 an attempt to blow up the Parliament building while King James I officially opened that year’s session of Parliament. As we saw just a few days ago when Queen Elizabeth II opened the current session, that task has historically fallen to the reigning monarch.
As I read that, I remembered the 2005 movie, “V for Vendetta,” where a future dystopia gave rise to a similar character who ultimately succeeded where the original, Guy Fawkes, had failed. The verse at the top was created in light of Fawkes’ original attempt.
What I found in the historical account, and in subsequent wars and violence in England’s history, was how religion and state were so deeply intertwined.
You see, when Fawkes tried to blow up James and the Parliament, Roman Catholics in England were a severely persecuted sect. They were abused socially, economically, and personally by a government that was predominantly Puritan Protestant. The king, himself, supported the Puritans. (As an aside, I found it interesting that King James I, yes, THAT King James, the one who sanctioned the King James Bible…you know the one that so many fundamentalists tout as the One, True Version because God speaks in archaic English…THAT King James was Gay. Yep. Just sayin’)
King James I
Anyway, Guy Fawkes was Catholic. He and his co-conspirators thought that they could effect some kind of political advantage through an act of terrorism. Or, maybe they just wanted to tell the Puritans, “Hey! Payback’s a Bitch!”
When I finally got through the timeline to Voltaire and the French revolution, I had one of those moments where a light bulb comes on and you say, “Ah ha!”
The people who framed the U. S. Constitution where contemporaries to many of the events that rocked England and France. They had first hand knowledge of how society could very quickly run off the rails when Religion and the State got into bed together. And, they certainly wanted to prevent that happening in the nascent United States. So, with the wisdom of Solomon they knit together a guiding document that would weave non-sectarianism into the very fabric of the country.
Over the years this has been described as a wall of separation between Church and State. It is a High wall. It is a Good wall. It is a Necessary wall.
For those who try to say that the U.S. is a Christian nation because that’s what the Founders intended? Sorry. You’re Wrong. It isn’t and they didn’t.
The Founders knew the dangers of mixing Religion with the State. Guy Fawkes could have been a reminder. Perhaps, in the back of Jefferson’s mind was a little verse…
I have so many things that I want to write and share banging around in my brain. One of these days I will actually sit down and open that door and let whatever is in there out to play.
Until then, however, I want to share another piece by another smart person saying more smart stuff.
Pastor Brian Zahnd wrote this as a counter the mantle that too many Evangelicals have claimed for political leaders, specifically Donald Trump. I have to agree with Brian’s take on these things. He has thought through issues that many of us don’t really notice. He noted that this excerpt is taken from his book, “Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile.” I have not read the book, so I can’t recommend it. But, if this particular post is an indication of the book’s contents, I can say that it might be a good read for people unclear about a Christ-follower’s place in the world of politics.
Here is a taste.
“God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” -Ephesians 1:20-23
This is the rich Christology of Paul that should thrill our soul and inform our political theology. But if Paul’s rich Christological understanding of all authority belonging to the Lord’s anointed Christ isn’t real to us, then we are tempted to imagine God working divine purposes through politicians who we pretend are anointed by God. This mistake can at times be relatively benign, or it can be as malignant as it was in Germany in the 1930s. There are consequences to not understanding the full ramifications of the apostolic confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.
I encourage you to click through to Brian’s blog here.
It should really be a no-brainer. In fact, it seems that if you love God you will necessarily love your enemy.
Right?
For anyone whose home isn’t in some cave deep in the jungle that statement would ring true. But, for those of us who live and breathe in the U.S. things are a bit more nuanced, to say the least.
I spend a lot of time reading blogs, essays, and news reports from various sources. (Admittedly, Fox News is not one of them.) These pieces cover subjects from climate change to koalas with VD.
There is one topic that seems to garner a bit more than its fair share of coverage. That is, White Evangelicalism.
What is this, you ask?
White Evangelicalism is the broad umbrella that folks use to cover White conservatives who share some kind of Evangelical faith in God. These are the folks who voted overwhelmingly for Donald “Pussy Grabber” Trump. Some polls show that a good 83% of these people who profess to follow Jesus of Nazareth voted for him.
White Evangelicals are largely conservative politically and socially. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. I respect their right to make those choices and will go to the mat with anyone who would try to take that right away. However, many of these people go well beyond simply supporting conservative causes. These others actively work to deny the rights of others to express themselves in a like fashion.
People like Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church. Pastor Anderson is vocally anti LGBT. His hatred for LGBT people has gotten him banned from several countries in Africa and Europe.
There’s Robert Jeffress of First Baptist in Dallas. He is a noted supporter of Mr. Trump and other hard-line, nationalist conservatives. In his mind it seems that there are only two groups of people, White Evangelicals and Everyone Else. Everyone Else is, well, you get it. He and others whom historian John Fea refers to as Court Evangelicals have an agenda that seems to desire an American theocracy with White Evangelicals at the helm. No other solution to what they see are the ills that plague this nation is possible. For them it is a zero sum game where any gain by Everyone Else is necessarily a loss for White Evangelicals. Period. End of story. This causes Pastor Jeffress and others like him, say, Franklin Graham, Jim Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and others to view Everyone Else as enemies to be vanquished.
So what? Who really cares what a bunch of crotchety old white guys think, anyway?
Well, me for one.
Yeah, I consider myself part of Everyone Else. But, that’s not why what these people think or say. The thing that bothers me is that they spew their hatred for Everyone Else in the name of Jesus. And, I’m sorry, that doesn’t cut it. These people don’t get a free pass to hate others in the name of a Person who hated no one.
So, a few days ago as I was praying I had to confess to God that I felt that these people were enemies of the Gospel. That also made them my enemies. This was hard for me to say. After all, I lay claim to faith in God through Christ. Just like many of those White Evangelicals do. Shouldn’t I consider them my sisters and brothers? After all, not all siblings get along real well. But, they’re still siblings none the less.
Well, maybe. I supposed sisters can grow up in a way that will alienated them from their sisters and brothers. They could technically become ‘enemies.’
But, what I feel is different. It’s like these people are illegitimate children. Bastards born of a different lineage all together. How was I to deal with this? Should I attack them like they attack Everyone Else? No, that doesn’t sound right. Should I embrace them and engage with them with the love of Christ? That sounds like enabling. I don’t think that’ll work either. What then?
So, I prayed.
A couple of days before this I led a Bible study at the church I attend. One of the texts we looked at was Psalm 8. In that Psalm is this line: ” Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger,” NRSV. I don’t like that translation so much. Looking at the original language I think a better translation would be, “Out of the mouths of children and sucklings You have established a stronghold that will silence Your foe and avenger.” It seems that the praise of those who are the weakest and most vulnerable is capable of silencing the loud clamor of those who stand opposed to God.
I realized that I don’t need to take White Evangelicalism to task. I really don’t even need to deal with them at all. My first obligation is to praise God and live in a manner that reveals God’s heart for EVERYONE, (White Evangelicals included). By doing that and encouraging others to do likewise, the voices of the Enemy will be silenced.
Should we love our enemies? Yeah. But, that doesn’t mean that we must engage with them on their terms. Our first responsibility is to love and engage with God. Anything more is just noise.
How long has it been? 40 years? 45? Such a long time to be alone. Yet, not alone. Or, was I simply lost in a crowd? Maybe that’s closest to the truth. Lost in a crowd of people who claimed to be family. Yet, they weren’t quite. Am I alone? Or, am I part of something larger?
In our Western, particularly U.S., culture an odd creature was birthed. This creature had no apparent need for anyone else. No nature; no nurture. It just sort of “appeared” in our collective popular mythos.
Over time this creature became known as “The Rugged Individual.”
Those of us old enough to remember will recall this creature
seated atop a strong horse with mountains in the background. He was smoking a
Marlboro cigarette.
Perhaps this creature was born out of our nation’s desire to cut ties
with ancestral homelands and make a go of it as a New Nation that needed no one
else. No king or pope or other “authority” was going to tell us what to do. We
are an Individual Nation.
Or, maybe the whole idea of the Rugged Individual has always
been somewhere sleeping, latent within our individual psyches.
I really don’t know.
What I do know, now, is that while this creature surely exists,
it is surely a lie.
It is a dangerous lie, to boot.
Now, I can take this idea in several directions.
I could make it a defense of Socialism. After all, isn’t Socialism ultimately a
critique of individual accomplishment? Doesn’t it strike at the heart of MY
will and well-being having preeminence over the will and well-being of the
collective?
No, I’m
not going there. Maybe some other time.
I could touch on Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book “It Takes a Village” to
discuss how we must work together as a “village” to properly raise our
children.
While that is an excellent topic for discussion, it’s not what I have in
mind here.
No, I think that I want to touch on something a bit more
personal. Something that has impacted me, my family, and my community at a
visceral level. It has chipped away at my soul and my mind to create something
that doesn’t
quite resemble the Rugged Individual. Nor, does it quite fit as a piece of some
ethereal ‘Whole.’
It actually quite resembles the confused person described at the beginning of this post.
For quite a long time I’ve tried to discover my place in life. You
know, trying to answer those unanswerable questions like “Why am I here”? What’s
the meaning of life? Why is there air? (Uh, no, that’s not one of them. The
answer to that is obvious: to fill soccer balls.)
When I first came to faith in Christ as a 16 year old idealist, I was taught that God loved ME. In fact, God loved ME so much that if I had been the only human on earth, Jesus would still come to give His life so that I could live. I participated in a Billy Graham event where he preached a message that claimed that I could not be saved unless I made a confession of MY PERSONAL sin and received Jesus as MY PERSONAL savior. It was all about ME and MY and MINE. Graham wasn’t the first to explain faith in this way. The concept he preached has been around since at least the time of John Calvin. But, it found fertile soil in this nation of Rugged Individuals who saw God vindicating their Rugged Individualism. God didn’t save a collective. No! That was a communist plot! God saved ME!
But, then I met a bunch of hippies who believed in God. I
started to hang with them. We were part of a larger movement that became known
as the Jesus Movement. (Profound. I wish that I could have helped them come up
with a better handle. Anyway, I digress.) Together we began to play around with
the concept of Community. We tried to model this new thing after what we
understood about the early Church as described in the first few chapters of the
Acts of the Apostles. These prototype Jesus People sold their belongings and put
the proceeds in a community account that all could draw from as needed. COOL!
They cared for one another as sisters and brothers in a large extended family.
STILL COOL! They shared all things in common and lived together in peace and
harmony. WAY COOL!
We found out that the Bible talked a lot about how we should
live together in love. We were a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation. This is
the language of community and togetherness. And, this all came at a time in our
nation’s
trek through history when we desperately needed such a concept. We had become
fragmented as a people. Race; War; Politics. It seemed that all of the powers
of the Universe had conspired to break our world into little pieces. We needed
to try and find some cohesiveness. There was something embedded deep in our
human DNA that cried out for an end to the splintering of our world. So, these
ideas from the Bible resonated with us.
But, we still held on tightly to our identities as Rugged
Individuals. After all, that concept had been drilled into us for generations.
It would not simply sit back and say, “Oh, right, community. That’s cool. I’ll
just pack up and leave.”
No. We still, after all that we were learning about our
interdependence, militantly held on to our independence. So, we changed the
story a bit. We started to preach that God made us for one another. To live
together in true Christian community. But, to join you needed to confess YOUR
INDIVIDUAL sin and accept Jesus as YOUR INDIVIDUAL savior. Hmmm…not much of a difference
there.
Eventually, we made some emendations. We elevated Family to the
place of an actual individual. So, now our community could be called a Family
of Families. Isn’t
that sweet? This became a point of contention with me at a former church. The
church leadership insisted that the Eucharist, the celebration of Communion,
should be celebrated within the confines of the family unit. So, the head of
each ‘household’ came up and received the bread and wine. They then took the
elements back to their INDIVIDUAL families to share. For me, this practice was,
and is, antithetical to the whole concept of the sacrament. But, that’s a
subject for another post.
So, why have I spent this time and more than 1,000 words to say all of this?
A week ago the priest of the church I now attend talked about a parable that Jesus taught. It was about a certain shepherd who realized that one of his sheep was missing. Now, he still had 99 sheep that were safe and sound. But, being the dutiful shepherd, he left the 99 and sought out the missing sheep. This story has been used over the years to show how much Jesus cares about the INDIVIDUAL. He will abandon 99 and leave them to the elements and go off in order to seek and save the lost ONE. Wow! I’m really pretty important to Jesus!
And, that my friends, is the point that people using this text
want to make. It appeals to our emotions in a deep way. It paints the portrait
of No One Left Behind. It appeases our Rugged Individual.
Is that what God intended for the story?
Well, maybe. In part.
But, perhaps there is another take away from it. A way to
understand it in the light of one of the overarching themes of the entire
Bible.
Throughout the Scriptures there is the idea that God is forming
a People. He is in the business of Nation building. Images of sheep, (plural),
and goats and lambs and flocks abound in its pages.
What if the story of the lost sheep is more about the condition
of the flock than the lost sheep?
What if it’s
the flock,restored to wholeness, that is the point of the story?
I think it is.
I think that unless we can get beyond ourselves as individuals
and drive a stake into the heart of the Rugged Individual we, as people, will
suffer. Unless we can reach even beyond that and somehow see that we are not
just a single species, but part of a greater community made up of all of the
Cosmos, we will suffer.
God, in the beginning created Adam. He created THEM. And, then
graciously placed THEM in a Garden full of their fellow creatures to live and
thrive TOGETHER.
Earlier today I wrote about the diversity of cultures and their intrinsic worth in the eyes of God. I hold that to be dear to my heart.
One point , though…
I am not indigenous. So, if I was to appropriate their spiritual practices I would very quickly find myself in error. It works the same way as demanding that ALL cultures embrace the Western Church’s spirituality. It’s just wrong.
I do have a spiritual heritage that does find its roots in the Western Church. For me, God worship should find its foundation in the historic practices that singularly identify the Church within the context of the World. I find people like Jonathan Aigner quiet refreshing as they urge us onward toward our better selves in worship. And, I have to agree with his assessment of contemporary styles of worship. They are shallow and without Soul. Click on the post below to read Jonathan’s recent post about this.
One of the basic tenets of Western Christianity is that only those people who believe in Jesus as the Son of God can be saved or accepted by God. They cite especially the text in the Gospel According to John where Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.”
That does sound pretty exclusive.
So, missionaries and colonists took their understanding of God and the Gospel and went out to the uttermost parts of the world in order to make disciples of all people.
It looks like the right thing to do. From a certain point of view.
A point of view that I no longer find tenable.
As I walk among friends from diverse cultures I find that God has already shown up to them. No, not like with Jesus. But, truly the influence of Creator is not the personal property of Christians or Jews. Creator has touched the hearts and lives of billions of other souls in ways that we in the West just don’t seem to understand.
And, THAT’S OK!
We don’t need to understand. We do, however, need to love and encourage each of these cultures to cultivate their relationships and understand of God. We can do that without imposing our Western culture on them.
So, I have no problem sharing this link to a group called, the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. These women have a heart for Creator, Creation, and all those who call this big piece of space rock home. I believe that they have truly experienced God. Their Way, Truth, and Life may look different than mine. That doesn’t mean they are wrong.
So, I invite you to click on the above link and check them out. Who knows, we may all learn something!
Well,
it’s
that time again. You know, when everyone who has access to the internet shares
their views on the year that is now closing. There will be pundits who go over
every little bit of political detritus so that they can show everyone how
politically astute they are. There will be others who will share with us all of
the tech milestones that we have passed. The latest smartphone or Alexa type
device will be hailed as the greatest development since the automatic bread
slicer. Others will write about entertainment or sports happenings. They will
want us to know who the movers and shakers of the industry were. And, they’ll
tell us about all of the folks who began 2018 but didn’t survive to ring it
out.
I’m
not going to do any of that. No, I’m going to keep it personal. Not that my
life this past year has been in any way newsworthy. It hasn’t. I am pretty
sure, though, that any one who reads this, (maybe both of you!), will be able
to relate. After all, none of us are entertainment or sports stars. We don’t
hang out in the halls of government. Nor do we own the World Wide Web. I think
that we’re all pretty much the same. Just regular folks trying to get by.
So, what happened…
Well, one thing that I don’t think that you can relate to is that as
of yesterday I have been sober for one year. “What?” you ask. “You had a
drinking problem?” Well, it depends on how you look at it. From where I was in
2017 I could say, “Problem? I drink, I get drunk, I fall asleep. See? No
problem.” The truth, though, is that I do have a problem. So, going all through
2018 without imbibing is a pretty big deal.
Perhaps as a result of the first thing, I spent more time on
personal fitness. After all, I’m getting to be an old fart. I already had one heart attack. I
seriously don’t want a repeat of that. In fact, during June and July I averaged
nearly 100 miles walking. I completed the equivalent of a half marathon twice.
I slowed down a bit during August and September because of weather. Plus, I had
other activities that helped keep me fit. I hope to continue working at this in
2019.
I spent more time writing in 2018 than in previous years. Some
of you are aware that I completed NaNoWriMo in November. 50,000+ words in just
under 30 days. I also completed that novel by the second week of December. And,
I just started a second a couple days ago. Although, I’m under no time
constraints with this one. Maybe, by spring I’ll have a first draft. I also
decided to pick up the pace here a bit. Whether anyone reads these posts or
not, I have continued to write and share. Hopefully, that’ll continue into the
new year.
One of the more obscure things that I did was to confirm with a
financial advisor that I will, in fact, be able to retire before I reach 70.
That was welcome news. Although,that won’t become a reality until 2020, it is
something to look forward to. I will never truly retire and become a snow bird
traveling between the North and Florida. But, I will no longer be working for
someone else.
The biggest accomplishment, though, is the fact that I made it
through another year alive and fairly well. It has required an effort to
accomplish this. The stuff I wrote above played a large part in making it. I am
grateful to those who have had my back during this year, and previous ones.
And, I’m
learning how to let gratitude continue to grow.
Yeah, 2018 had some rough moments. But, overall I think that it
lived well. Soon, that old guy, Father Time, will swing his sickle and all of
those past moments will be reaped and stored into the barns of Eternity. From
there we can access them, process the grain, and the memories can then sustain
us as week walk into the unknown of 2019.
Yesterday I wrote a piece about how Evangelicals embrace something called Penal Substitution. They believe that this is foundational for the Real True Gospel, (RTG). I also said that along the way people who really don’t care about religion or theology would be able to take from it. After all,who really does care what a bunch of religious folks think? As long as it doesn’t affect me, let them believe whatever nonsense they want.
Ok, fair enough.
In 2016 a person was elected president of the U.S.This person is at best unqualified for the office. At worst, he’s a danger to the Republic. How did this happen? Social scientists, anthropologists, news pundits…everyone has a theory. And, they all make sense.
One thing, though, that sometimes gets overlooked is that 81% of White Evangelical Christians voted for this person.
Eighty-one Percent!!!
And, some recent polls indicate that support has remained at or near that level throughout the last two years.
How is that possible? Seriously. How can an entire demographic that has historically touted its moral superiority over the immorality of “the world” support a known liar, adulterer, womanizer, misogynist, thrice married, ignorant buffoon? It boggles the mind.
Unless…unless you understand the Evangelical mindset.
The simple answer is a single issue.
Abortion.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Evangelical position swung from being OK with abortion to one of vicious opposition. That one issue became the rallying cry for all who followed the likes of Pat Robertson and,especially, Jerry Falwell, Sr. So loud was the cry that the Christian Right made it the litmus test for any political candidate. If a candidate’s platform included the words, “anti-abortion,” then they were a good choice.
The Republican Party sensed that and made abortion a part of the party platform. Now, when Evangelicals went to the polls their decision was made easy. Vote Republican! Easy-peasy!
So, when the current president embraced the Republican platform, including the anti-abortion plank, Evangelicals saw their savior.
Ok, that’s the simple answer.
But, it’s not the only or even best answer.
To find that we need to look deeper into the heart of Evangelicalism.
Yesterday I wrote that many in the Evangelical camp sincerely believe that God is so Just that it’s impossible for God to be in the same room as sin. (Whatever that is.) In fact, God hates sin, and by extension, those who practice sin. Hate, hate, hate! Over time this has been hardwired into the hearts of the faithful.
God Hates!
This has enabled those who embrace this picture of God to also hate. They, by Divine example, now have a binary that they can follow. They can know in their knowers that they are righteous and oh so good with confidence. There is a line. On one side the righteous followers of God; on the other is Everyone Else. There is no gray.Everything is black and white. They can even go to their Holy Book and find all sorts of texts to prove just how righteous they are and how worthy of their hate everyone else is.
This is where the danger lies for us and for the world. By dividing everything and everyone into Us and Them they can in all good faith destroy what they don’t like or agree with and tell themselves, “Well, it’s what God wants us to do.”
Are you reading this starting to see the picture form?
Evangelicals in the U.S.have and agenda. And, it’s not simply a religious agenda. It is entirely political. Falwell and friends decided that there could be a political solution to a very Spiritual issue. Their Evangelical followers then sold their collective soul to the devil in order to see their twisted and misguided theology become a physical reality.
The U.S.,to them, was a Christian nation that they could reclaim and, through political means, force their idea of God and righteousness on everyone. (This is the main reason that I think that Mike Pence is more dangerous than our current president.)
Now, I admit that this is an oversimplification of a very complex issue. Evangelicals are not monolithic. There are sincerely faithful people who hold to the tenets of historical Evangelicalism. I know many personally. They are good people who really want to follow Jesus faithfully.
But, the truth of the matter seems to be that the root of Evangelicalism that has been passed along from the First Great Awakening until now is rotten. It has grown into a macabre caricature of the Church that started as a result of Jesus Christ’s life.
It is dangerous.
It is foul.
It must be resisted at every front vigorously.
Hopefully, this is something that you can take home with you.
