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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
I believe no. 5 was voting for neither. If French disdains me for switching to no. 3 this year, he’s wrong to do so. I don’t disdain him for it. If I were certain he was doing it I doubt it would be right for me to disdain him even then.
I think I missed something somewhere. What are the numbers about?
Number 3. does seem good now, but didn’t in 2016. Prager is right about voting. You don’t become the person you vote for, nor do you descend to his level of morality. A vote is an extremely limited form of self-expression. It is a decision – a choice – made in context. And the context matters. There are plenty of other ways to make a moral statement.
Just like it’s more important to stop bad laws than to pass good ones, it’s more important to stop the greater evil than to hold out for that good candidate that will come along some day.
The issue of judges completely negates the short term/long term argument in number 1.
Well said.
Just curious, why all this talk about a double standard? The events of the past three years should have sent that argument packing.
Trump has been investigated six ways to Sunday by extremely aggressive and partisan prosecutors who spent three years on an administration that leaks like a sieve and has internal saboteurs. The prosecutors were willing to cheat and they still couldn’t find anything. I think we should accept the fact that Trump is pretty clean, other than being a foul-mouthed philanderer.
Trumps flaws might lead to an embarrassing scandal that will be fodder for the comedians in the country.
Yup, same with Bill Clinton, but Clinton’s additional failings gave us 9/11. And Hillary’s brought us Benghazi.
And that’s before we get to the life issue. Policy has a moral component, and between Trump and the Clintons it isn’t even close.
Yeah, the real double standards tend to be on the left.
French, I suppose, is talking about whichever people–of whom perhaps there are very few–who once claimed that Clinton was to opposed because he was an adulterer and now claim Trump can do no wrong.
I’m with you, but I can sympathize with conservatives who felt that they’ve remained consistent in their values and chose not to vote for Trump as a result. I’ve seen many of these individuals have vitriol thrown at them and I can understand how they would come to the conclusion that Donald Trump’s influence has been pernicious overall.
Perhaps one double standard that’s taken for granted is the one where conservatives hold their allies to a higher standard than the opposition. For me it’s pretty simple, but that’s because I grew up around leftists, but I could imagine how people who’ve spent their lives around conservatives might be a little disturbed by the sense that they might not have a future among their former friends.
Trump’s adulterous affairs were consensual! Big, gaping difference with Clinton and, again, how does French know Trump hasn’t repented and made amends?
I haven’t said French is a jerk. I’ve said he’s a joyless scold with bad judgement who no longer deserves to be listened to by Christian conservatives or any other serious friend of liberty. David French would have us living under “democratic socialism,” and when the state of society worsened, he’d be flummoxed when people accused him of having something to do with it. All because Donald Trump called Nancy Pelosi a poopyface on Twitter (I’m making this up because, unlike David French, I don’t follow what happens on Twitter!)
Clinton had plenty of consensual affairs, and if some people criticized them as all by themselves sufficient grounds for not voting for someone but now are all for voting for Trump, it’s ok to point out that they’ve changed their standards.
And an old-fashioned Respectable Position on Trump Number 5 is now discredited, and that means someone who takes that position has bad judgment. But that doesn’t make him a joyless scold who no longer deserves to be listened to by Christian conservatives or any other serious friend of liberty.
French makes a point in one of his recent articles that I think gets to the heart of the dispute here. Basically, he doesn’t believe the defeat of Trump would be all that harmful to the conservative cause. He uses the abortion issue as an example, showing how abortion rates have dropped regardless of who is president, cites the work done at the state level during the Obama administration to restrict abortion.
So, if you don’t buy the notion that Trump’s re-election is essential to the survival of Christian values and beliefs, then the calculation of whether to support him despite his obvious non-Christian words and actions is entirely different. That may be the main difference between French and his critics here.
Augie, French is free to throw away his vote. That’s not my issue with him. It’s his claim to represent “true” Christian evangelicalism while, in his role as public commentator, encouraging others to follow his conscience and attempting to shame them if they don’t.
Can you cut with the numbers? I have to keep going back to refer to them and I’d rather you take the space here to be specific. Thanks.
It is not about someone changing their standards.
It is about, the battlefield has changed.
I would say Clinton loved his country , probably not the same way I love my country. However, he did not want to purposely harm it or change it from how it was founded. A lose to a guy like Bill was not a catastrophe.
The progressives own Bill,s party now. They DO want to fundamentally change us into something completely different than what we were founded to be. And they also want to destroy anyone who stands in there way.
Because that battle field has changed. Tactics must change. Trump’s sins are overlooked because God has uniquely gifted him to battle those who want to change us to a socialist sh t hole.
No one. No one in the Republican Party right now could if withstood what has been thrown at him.
David Frinch is a nincompoop for not getting this. It would be one thing if he was not using his platform to actively tryto ruin the person uniquely qualified for this battlefield. And then on top of that, to smear and shame christians for supporting the guy who is standing on the battlefield holding our standard.
David French should be looked at in the same light as Chamberlain.
Shame on you David French. I blow my nose in your general direction.
Yeah, that strikes me as bad judgment. Even against Hillary it seemed wrong to me. Now more so with the judges.
I think this position is now discredited, although I used to find it very plausible. I think people clinging to this theory have bad judgment, but that’s the worst I can say about that.
We are in agreement that that sort of thing is wrong!
Concur
Does David French really want to be judged by his actions more than 10 but less than 30 years ago?
FIFY.
There is certainly no evidence that he has done this in the last three years.
Yeah, that’s why I keep saying that these pious busy-bodies refuse to believe that grace or forgiveness applies to the President. While it’s clear he has engaged in immoral sexual behavior in the past, these people act as if he’s still screwing around on his wife today. There’s no evidence of that. But for these people the President is, as Hillary once said of his voters, “irredeemable.”
You are reading the same article but apparently taking vastly different things from the piece. In his latest French does discuss the response to Clinton vs the response to Trump. The title of the pieces is “How, Then, Should Christians Vote? (and do evangelicals owe Clinton and apology)”
French answer is that no election is binary and Christians should not vote for an immoral person. Find a Democrat that is not too crazy, a third party or don’t vote. French does state that he could not vote for any of the current Democrats. Nor, could he vote for Trump.
For my part, I think there is a moral obligation to vote in a manner that preserves life and religious freedom. That means you may have to vote for a Jerk who will do good things. Not voting or voting for someone who could not win might make you feel good about yourself but it does not have any positive effect on the Country.
Amen! It’s not about preserving your precious piety. It’s about doing the best you can in a broken world to oppose evil and promote good.
That is correct.
Hooray humor! We still got a chance!!!
We do, but the Left is hopeless.
I am told that I use humor too much, and people don’t get me. Well…I’m sorry about that. But I like to keep ya guessin’!
Boy, can I relate to that!
Jonah recently did a long and delightful interview with Jake Tapper on his Remnant podcast, January 13th. They cover all manner of hypocrisies, including their own. I am sure I have heard French humble himself likewise more than once. But usually their personal humility, or lack thereof, is not the topic they are addressing. It would make for very awkward essays if they were to stop frequently to flagellate themselves in the public square it would disrupt the flow of their arguments.
I do think that Jonah is overwrought sometimes, and David French is famously the man who read all conservatives opposed to the Iraq War out of the movement on the back page of National Review. The first time I met Jerry Pournelle I thought he was going to force strangle French remotely while I watched for that little gem. I’m awarding that argument to Jerry, hands down.
Jonah and David both write a lot of material on deadline that needs a certain amount of controversy and furniture chewing to draw eyeballs and clicks. Let’s judge their arguments and leave it to God to judge their souls.
This is exactly what Jonah and Jake Tapper (CNN) got into on the Remnant podcast from January 13th. There may be more self-awareness there than some are willing to credit.
“Serious friend of liberty” – Does that make French a traitor, WC, as Drew thinks? Sounds like you two are pretty much on the same page.
No thanks. If you and Drew are representative of Trump voters, well, those are ranks I will not be joining. But thank you for clarifying things for me.
I.e., no voting for Trump? Might I ask why? If it came up here I must have missed it.
I didn’t write this post to talk about either Jonah or David and judge the state of their souls. I’m sorry if it turned that direction.
However, their arguments that Donald Trump is a bigger threat to the Republic because of his boorishness and sometimes incivility than the nihilistic progressive Left are highly disputable. I think they’re badly mistaken and, if their arguments were to win the day, would damage our freedoms irreparably. But, now I’m just repeating myself.