The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the American president started showing all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre among Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his crime policy states that when someone steals your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater also.
The apparent and straightforward truth that the Savior from scripture requests a kind of profound affection focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but due to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the determined opposition against Trump emerge in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in numbers during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, through connection to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most negative regarding America and Christianity was nonexistent; it means both modesty and conviction, a blend that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
