As President Trump and his minions of sycophantic enablers daily attack representative democracy and The United States Constitution, millions of us work to deal with our outrage. It is not an easy task.
The list of Trump’s assaults on our government all supported by a complicit MAGA Republican majority in congress and a confoundedly permissive Supreme Court is being well documented. But there are few consequences.
The heartbreak of these times in America is amplified for me by the horrific truth that Trump is seeking to crucify the mission and message of Jesus. It is likely that Trump neither knows better or cares very much. He can make money from selling the Bible but it appears he clearly does not read it.
The life and teachings of Jesus are for Trump – to borrow the phrase from Al Gore – “an inconvenient truth.” Characteristically then, Trump cries “hoax” and “witch hunt” and with the help of MAGA Christian Nationalists, seeks to sell his own self-serving, blasphemous and heretical version of Jesus.
The Gospel record of Jesus’ life reveals a person remembered for advocating such socially and religiously life changing things as “love your neighbor as yourself.” The Gospel record of Jesus’ life reveals a person remembered for saying, “whatever you have done to the least of these – the most vulnerable and broken – you have also done to me.”
The Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus who cares for the outcast, who teaches that God is in all people – even in non-Jews, Samaritans, folks with diseases and poor people.
I understand that we all have a right to our political opinions but none of us, whether a follower of Jesus or not, has a right to ignore the teachings of Jesus or the deeds of Jesus and instead make him into our own image or a standard bearer for the very things Jesus opposed in his own life and times.
We can’t make Jesus into a Christian Nationalist warrior announcing that it is God’s will to build an American economy on cuts in education, health care, and food for children while leading MAGA “disciples” to create a restored, white America as does Trump’s Director of The United States Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought.
We can’t make Jesus into that same Project 2025 Christian Nationalist warrior fueling culture wars in libraries, universities, and school boards as does Trump loyalist, Rev. Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the 14,000 member First Baptist Church in Dallas.
We can’t rewrite The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke by signing an Executive Order creating a White House Office of Faith designed to religiously endorse Trump policies. That blasphemy is bad enough. But then, naming the fraudulent, religious huckster Paula White to lead this office of faith is – along with all the racist, white, Christian Nationalism of Trumpism – a 21st century crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
A reality of our secularized American culture is that we are often naïve palm wavers. We celebrate the entrance of the most superficial of things, have shorter and shorter attention spans, and seem to be less inclined to build our society and country on voices of hope and aspiration. Instead, we are settling for the “it is what it is” of the entertainment value of the devices in the palm of our hands.
For the Gospel of Trump to succeed in redefining Jesus in the MAGA version of religious truth there must be a climate of inquisition. For the Gospel of Trump to succeed in redefining Jesus in the MAGA version, there must be a religiously ambivalent majority that is not paying any attention. I am more than concerned that we are ripe for this tragic gospel.
In the name of Jesus, we must wake up.
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