The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room two times larger than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – really, no former commander would have contemplated – independently wrecking major areas of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader try to upend the established notion about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into an icon of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater also.
The evident and straightforward truth that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a type of profound affection focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest Among Us
So I have been inspired to see the determined opposition to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and welcome him or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by relationship to the highest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it imply acting as if the worst about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both modesty and faith, a blend that serious US believers should embrace.
