I don't get it.
Isn't Donald Trump the opposite -- flagrantly so -- of everything that Jesus preached?
I am not the one to write about what Christians are thinking. I am no longer a “person of faith.” I was brought up in a Protestant home and learned the standard version: the Jesus story, Christmas and Easter, original sin, the teachings ascribed to Jesus, and salvation through belief in Christ as God. Then, in college, I learned how Christianity was constructed by squabbling groups over its first few centuries, then refined and re-refined ever since. Oh. It’s all made up, I decided. It was made up at the start by opinionated, disputatious people we know very little about, and the documents are full of forgeries and later writings passed off as earlier ones, created as propaganda, not history.
I likened the creation of Christianity to a centuries-long argument built from the same mix of politics, group dynamics and ideology I saw in the squabbling anti-war groups of the late 1960s: SDS, Progressive Labor, the Eugene McCarthy liberals, the peace Republicans, and so on. It was just people arguing.
Christianity, I decided, is real the way the English language is real: a foundational cultural artifact. But it isn’t real the way rocks are real.
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I keep thinking of a scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, which I saw as a child. The Israelites, tired of waiting for Moses, have made a golden calf. The narrator intones: “They bore him upon their shoulders and rejoiced, saying ‘This be our god, oh Israel.’”
Have Republican Christians simply given themselves up to sin and the worship of a golden calf? Maybe that’s it, and they are on a binge they will later regret. But that is a harsh judgment, and I am an outsider.
I know there are people of faith among my readers. Maybe they can explain the Christian/Trump deal from the inside.
So I am asking for guest posts. Maybe I can hear from Trump-supporting Christians who can explain their thinking, and from Christians who don’t support Trump who can tell me what they think is going on.
Send your guest post to my email address: peter.w.sage@gmail.com
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Trump is not a Christian. He doesn't live a Christian lifestyle. Trump has co-opted Christians to benefit himself and to further his own cause. Born-again Christians flocked to Trump because he promised to be their champion, while Catholic Democrats support abortion. Trump is not a conservative, either, yet he has gotten conservatives to be in his corner because he promised to be their champion. Trump is a master manipulator and salesman. He doesn't believe what he preaches, and he's in it to stroke his own ego, and to enrich himself. Voters get fooled and lied to by leaders of both parties.
ReplyDeleteMost people think that most of the world is Christian. The truth is that 2/3rds of the world's people are not Christians. Also, there are over 2000 recognized religions. Which one is right? Yours? Mine? It's hard to tell. Any of them? None of them? The Greeks and Romans had a slew of gods. One for everything in their lives. Religion was a way to explain nature or events. Perhaps the idea of a God up there watching everything you think and do is Man Made. Some people think that God has a plan for them that cannot be changed. If true, then why do people pray? They want Him to change His plans? For them? Why would He do that? Most people of faith do not like to debate their beliefs. That's because you cannot apply logic to religion. That's what faith means. Believe what you're told, no matter how illogical. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The only thing left is the memory of people who knew you. After a few generations, even that memory fades to nothing.
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