The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week research projected his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group within America might have little sense about him since they are non-believers or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his doctrine focuses on affection for other people, especially for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer them your pullover also.
The apparent and direct truth that the Jesus in biblical accounts requests a kind of extreme compassion centered on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been inspired to witness the persistent defiance against Trump arise in this past year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by relationship to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and faith, a blend that genuine American Christians should embrace.
