Kris Aaron, Baptist News Global: There's Just No Excuse
"When love isn't what guides us, when our primary values are indifference, or fear, or having to support a political candidate or toe a party line no matter what the cost, well then we're doing more than putting our faith at crisis. We're doing more than risking harm to our Christian witness and to the witness of others. Instead, we're actively engaging in idolatry, and we're running the risk of being an asshole. Idolatry is sinful, no matter what we try to replace God with. Kris Aaron, Pastor, First Baptist Church of Bristol, Virginia
It's encouraging to see a Baptist pastor recognize that American Christianity, including his own denominational tradition, is in a crisis because of the influence of right wing politics. I'm sick, and I mean physically and literally sick, of hearing people who label themselves as good, "conservative," Christians display an ignorance of what they claim to be essential theology and doctrine by setting aside their convictions when they cast their ballot.
I'm sick of hearing and seeing people who claim to be "conservative, Bible-believing" Christians, two catch words which mean they think their faith is superior to those they disagree with whom they label "liberal," and "who don't believe the Bible," say that they're not voting for a pastor-in-chief, they are voting for a commander-in-chief. I'd like to know where their inerrant, infallible Bible says that it is OK to choose political leaders whose lifestyle is deliberately sinful and worldly and who deny the basic soteriological doctrine of the Christian gospel. The Christians who lived in the days when the New Testament was being written could not imagine a civil government in which they got to have a say in who became head of state. Those who now push Christian nationalism and the idea that America's founders intended to start a "Christian nation" completely deny everything they say about it, along with the scripture, when they make that claim.
If the founders intended for the United States to be a "Christian nation," then why would electing a womanizing, adulterous, lying, cheating, narcissistic, vulgar, crooked, arrogant, Christ-denying, draft dodger as President be acceptable?
Idolatry
Last winter, Donald Trump Jr. told an Evangelical audience that they've spent half a century "turning the other cheek," and it hasn't worked out for them. At a Turning Point rally in Phoenix, Junior said, "We've turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the Biblical reference--I understand the mentality--but it's gotten us nothing. OK? It's gotten us nothing while we've ceded ground in every major institution in our country." Emphasis mine.
Following the Christian gospel has gotten us nothing? Really?
So what's the solution? Abandon the Christian gospel, from which this particular point is a core teaching of Jesus?
And let's get back on the ground of solid, Biblical theology and doctrine, which is something Don Jr. and his father know nothing about. What is the "nothing" that turning the other cheek has produced? Worldly political power? When has that ever been the goal of the Christian gospel? If Christianity, American Evangelical Christianity in particular, has "ceded ground," it's because it has become disconnected from the things that keep it connected to God. And that's exactly what Mr. Trump Junior is offering to those Christians who would follow Trump's political ambition, which is built on his worldly image and rests on his worldliness for which he denies needing forgiveness.
Aaron points to a recent example of idolatry intruding into the church on the coat-tails of right wing politics related by Russell Moore, current editor of Christianity Today. Moore concurs with Aaron's assessment of American Evangelical Christianity being in crisis by relating examples in which a church member comes up to a particular pastor after a sermon that was based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and asks him, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?"
Moore expresses alarm when the church member's response to the pastor's answer, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," is not "I'm sorry," but "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak."
"And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus are seen as subversive to us," says Moore, "Then we're in a crisis."
"For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." Jude, v. 4
These words from Jude are not a specific prophecy, but they are prophetic in the manner in which they address what far right Trumpian politics is doing to the church. Denying having done anything requiring God's forgiveness, claiming that the core principles of Jesus' gospel "aren't getting us anywhere in this world," and calling the gospel "liberal talking points" is a sign of how much ignorance there is in the church about its theology and doctrine by its members, and how much ungodly, perverted licentiousness has already intruded into it.
Ownership of the Philosophy and Practice of Politics
Calling Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "liberal talking points" and claiming that turning the other cheek is getting nowhere in the world both constitute what Jude calls "denying or only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." So is anyone making the claim that they have not done anything requiring God's forgiveness. There it is, right in plain sight. Christians who know the theology and doctrine of their faith should be able to see this without being prompted. The fact that they can't, or won't, says a lot about who they are and what they really believe.
Aligning with secular politicians was never the intention of Jesus. He established his church based on a demonstration of faith as a spiritual kingdom, something he and the apostles all made very clear. It was to conduct itself with respect toward the civil government, righteous obedience to civil law, as a testimony of its faith in Christ, but it was not to adopt its politics as doctrine, nor align itself with political power to achieve its mission and purpose.
Had the church in Jesus' and Jude's day aligned itself with the civil government, it would have corrupted itself with the brutality and murder that were used to keep people in line and make them submissive. It would have accepted idolatry and denied not only the principles of the gospel, but the characteristics it produces in those who live by it. Things like being humble, poor in spirit, and peacemakers, were not valued by the civil government of the time. And it is clear, from the words of those who promote right wing politics in our culture, that turning the other cheek and loving your neighbor, which are core practices expected of Christians, are not valued at all.
So accepting those who are leaders of that political philosophy mean owning the worldliness that comes with it, and that turns a Christian testimony on its ear, causing its death. It has opened the door to all kinds of scandal and evil that is becoming identified with Evangelical Christianity, including clergy sexual abuse scandals, financial corruption and subversion of the true gospel message of Jesus in favor of the warmed over worldliness they have placed at the center of their philosophy. Leaders who live as if they are above the law are not a rarity among Evangelicals. Their ownership of corruption from politics is behind all of that.
Would Jesus do This?
The governor of Texas has ordered spherical orange objects with sharp metal spikes placed in the Rio Grande River, where people sometimes cross from Mexico into the United States. Is this issue so bad that such cruelty and inhumane treatment of those desperate to get out of their circumstances and have a chance in the US is justified, even if Christian support for those politicians wasn't an issue? What does that say about the sincerity of anyone's Christian faith, if they can be aware of that happening and not be moved by the cruelty of it?
For that matter, those who follow trails through the Arizona desert, removing the water containers placed there by people concerned about those who have been taken there by the "Coyotes" who guide them into the United States are also just as cruel. There is no circumstance in which a Christian is permitted to be cruel or inhumane to a fellow human being, no matter what they have done.
If the church in the United States is ever going to see the revival that it claims it is crying out to God to see, it has to repent from the evil into which it has fallen, as a result of its association with far right wing politics. Those who have immersed themselves in right wing politics have pulled the plug on their own spirituality and that's why membership and attendance is tanking, churches are empty and getting emptier, and people are turning elsewhere for answers because the church no longer provides them.
"For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward." Mark 9:41, NRSV
If a revival is the desire, then the politics of worldliness and cruelty must be set aside.
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