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Reluctant Trump Christians, Where Is Your Confounding Love?
Consider this an exhortation. I hear things from Trump-ump David French (“calling balls and strikes,” but never tallying RBIs) and read articles from Christians anguished over the President’s ugly, New York Americanism, and I have trouble finding the Spirit in it. Rather than digging a channel to God’s ocean of mercy, it seems some Christians are trying to dispense it with a teaspoon. It’s all so pinched and joyless and, well, unfamiliar to me as “Christian.”
Donald Trump is a sinner. Christians should not be surprised by this. What is astonishing is the good he’s done and is continuing to do, which must, by necessity, originate with God, who is the source of all goodness. “Oh, but he’s not really Christian, he just mouths the right words about the preciousness of all human life as made in the image and likeness of God,” some say. The subtext of this criticism is he’s hopelessly irredeemable no matter what he says or does! Is that Christian love? Is it even recognizable as faith in God’s ability to work in and through Donald Trump’s life?
A reading from morning prayers from the book of James:
Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?
And from Romans:
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
“Yes, but affiliating with Donald Trump gives Christians and Christianity a bad reputation.” With whom? Are you really concerned about ingratiating yourself with the worshipers of Moloch?
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
In case you haven’t noticed, apologizing and making excuses to the Left is just chumming the water. Donald Trump gets this. Never apologize. You should not attempt to reconcile with evil or evil ideologies.
“But his tweets are embarrassingly juvenile and crass.” Maybe my response isn’t so much about my Christian faith and is more about my family genetics. My family of origin has ornery in its DNA. We like sassy and get a lot of laughs out of each other’s antics. I like to think of us as little lambs frolicking in the Lord’s pasture, and get the feeling He gets a good laugh, too.
It’s not that I don’t believe we’re all called to holiness, it’s just that these are minor infractions against the calling and I do believe we’ll all get there by the grace of God — eventually. And “holiness” doesn’t mean boring. Even Saint Augustine prayed, “Lord, make me holy, but not yet.” Father Michael Gaitley likes to say, “Make me a saint, but be gentle.” Our Good Shepherd is gentleness personified. Mercy Himself. We should strive to be imitators of Him.
And finally, “But Donald Trump once said he doesn’t need God’s forgiveness, even though he’s been an adulterer, a fornicator, a liar . . .” Were you born knowing you need a Savior? When did you figure it out? Have you never failed to ask for forgiveness when you should have? Have you come to know God better than you did 20 years ago? Why would all these things not also be true of Donald Trump? Whose timetable is he on anyway? Yours or God’s?
Frankly, I see a lot of ego and pride sneaking into the Christian angst over Donald Trump. And we all know where that leads. Will you be a joyful, loving, merciful disciple of Christ? Or a joyless scold, attracting no one to the faith? God gives us free will to choose.
Published in General
Evening WC,
I am a fan of Hillsdale and a supporter, I have not been there. The sculptures look super, and sitting on a VDH class would be great, Hillsdale could make money just selling tickets to those classes.
Concerning presidents who are jerks, there are only a few who might be exempt, Reagan, Carter, W. The rest either had affairs while married and lied about them, Ike, and Bush I, or had affairs in office, or were otherwise corrupt, Obama, Nixon. Truman is hard to nail down, but he did come from a corrupt political machine. So by the French jerk rating system, most of our presidents have been jerks. Trump has not used the IRS against his political opponents, or the FBI and CIA, like FDR, LBJ and others and he biggest crime is that he lives in the age of twitter and takes advantage of its ability to talk directly to the folks.
Ok, you like lots of answers. Cool.
And if I had a big platform that would be a problem because I might accidentally convince a few people to not vote for Trump?
And if I claimed to represent principled conservatism it would be a problem for some other reason?
Oh, sure. I dig that critique, as I said in # 201.
(Emph. added.) Read “The Politically Correct Guide to the Presidents”, by Steven Hayward.
I was shocked by what I learned about the real historical Jimmy Carter. It seems we’ve been sold a bill of goods.
Yes, and because friendly fire is generally frowned upon, even if the soldier lacks strict moral culpability.
It’s the same question. Don’t try to play your jedi philosopher mind games on me. I am not as fat as Jabba, but they don’t work on me.
Evening Mark,
Carter is not my favorite, his post presidency political actions have not been good. While in office, it was said that he controlled the schedule for playing on the tennis court and I thought that might suggest be too much of a micro manager. I thought Carter, while being an ineffective, was not corrupt or had any moral lapses. You probably know more about him than I.
In war, yes.
Nonsense. The words don’t mean the same thing, and I can’t be expected to read your mind if that’s what you meant. That’s a Sith power, and I don’t have it.
Dear Augie, the Left wants to put mentally ill men in women’s locker room and restrooms and have them compete in women’s sports. They’re indoctrinating our kids in public education to believe America is Howard Zinn’s proctologist’s view of the country. They want to take guns from law abiding Americans — after every incident in which innocent Americans are killed! They want to punish churches both financially and for adhering to their stated morals. They want to make taxpayer funded abortion legal up to the moment of birth, and sometimes afterward. They are power mad bullies.
I want people to understand this is war. We’ve even had people take real bullets over it — Steve Scalise. I find the lukewarm understanding of our peril less than admirable. Our kids are depending upon good men standing up against evil. Please be one of them.
Well answered. A good case that this is war–or something sufficiently similar.
Like I said above, I had Just War Theory in mind.
In this case, it would be a sin not to confront the left. I see the President as a soldier. And if his chief weapon is Twitter, I’m not going to say “Oh, I wish he was a pacifist.”
Well, yeah. But the fact that pacifism is the wrong answer doesn’t exactly justify war crimes.
War Crime ????
Obviously not. But we’re using an analogy.
Resisting the Left is like war, and not fighting back is like pacifism.
I totally buy that.
But the fact that pacifism is wrong does not justify war crimes; there are ok and not-ok ways to fight. If we’re going to stick to the analogy then we ought to recognize that there are ok and not-ok ways to fight the Left. E.g., bullying and logical fallacies should not be used. Harsh, true criticism, I figure, is fine–like pointing out the literal facts that the Democrats are disturbingly anti-Muslim and banned health insurance.
Here’s the reason for the multiple ?
Trumps tactics always get inflated. You did that here by insinuation perhaps unintentionally.
Can you name a war crime (analogy) that Trump has committed since his taking office ?
TWO SCOOPS OF ICE CREAM!!!!
Sorry. I have no idea what any of those three sentences are supposed to mean.
I just gave two examples of the relevant category: In the analogy where not critiquing the Left corresponds to pacifism and fighting them is like a just war, bullying and (knowingly) using logical fallacies would seem to correspond to war crimes.
In Trump’s case, his bullying use of Twitter would seem to fit. (Nothing comes to mind in the logical fallacy department unless some of his bullying was also an ad hominem fallacy.)
Mean words on twitter = war crime.
No wonder I have felt so frustrated with some of your comments.
Try reading my comments more carefully. I plainly said that is not the case. I said that there is an analogy–built on an analogy introduced by others, by the way.
I said that, using the analogy, Twitter bullying is to not critiquing the Left what a war crime is to pacifism.
I said that, using the analogy, Twitter bullying is to a proper critique of the Left what a war crime is to a just war.
I stayed in the analogy.
You tend to play both goals. Hard to keep up.
Perhaps this was some new use of the “=” symbol with which I am not familiar.
In any case, if you were sticking with the analogy, then it doesn’t look like you’ve even said anything about it, other than that you don’t like part of it. But what is that to me?
By the way, what do you mean by this?
If you mean I’m playing against both sides, that’s true–if the sides are “Never vote for Bad Orange Man!” and “Never criticize Orange Man on Our Side!” I’m against both sides there.
I’m for both sides if the sides are “Vote for Trump!” and “Be willing to criticize the President at need.”
Speaking of criticizing him and waging the analogue of a just war on the Left, I think we could even critique him for not critiquing the Left hard enough sometimes. I’m for calling them out on literally banning health insurance, and opposing the right of Muslims to exercise their religion, etc.
Well Aug, I am probably just a click closer than you on nuking Mr. French’s platform from orbit. 😉
When someone waxes on philosophically as you like to do I get lost. I am a plane spoken man and think logically and not so much philosophically.
Back a dozen posts or so when Spin mentioned the Jedi mind thing perhaps you were losing him too.
This situation is rather depressing, and I don’t know how to fix it. I speak as plainly as I know how. I don’t think I’ve done a sliver of philosophy in here, and I’ve done a ton of logic.
They mean the exact same thing, and you know it. Now…it’s time for a light saber duel!
We are either going to use the language, or we aren’t. Which is it? Me myself? I’ve actually been shot at by a foreign enemy of the state while wearing the uniform. We aren’t at war. But we can certainly use the language. We are fighting for something, but in a different way. So we are either going to use the language, in which case we are going to use it, or we aren’t. Don’t feign outrage when you feel someone has gone too far with the language.
Pardoning Blago. War crime. ;-)
He served 8 years and he deserved to.
Still waiting for Augie to give us an analogous “war crime” Trump has committed. Insulting the enemy doesn’t count.
Spin you misinterpreted my war crime question mark. Although I was ambiguous.
I was playing in the analogy of war and perfectly ok with it.
What I objected too was the inference that Trump has committed any war Crimes.
Blago pardon is a war crime ? I call BS.
You may not like it and I am not a fan of it. But , war crime ? No way.
I think it’s all metaphor. I’m the one who introduced the Just War analogy. Therefore, what constitutes a Twitter War Crime?