The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying all observers his plans for an ornate dance hall two times larger than the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and rising, and presently a study projected his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have dared – really, no previous leader would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment among Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly definitely not the narrative of a mighty king arising; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and direct truth that Christ of the gospels advocates for a kind of extreme compassion concentrated on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. In the fifties it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the determined opposition to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the highest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In both situations does it mean feigning the worst about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both meekness and belief, a combination that committed US believers should embrace.
