The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining occasions – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week research forecast his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably definitely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for other people, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your coat you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and clear reality that Christ from scripture advocates for a type of extreme compassion centered on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to see the persistent defiance against Trump arise in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
