The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis forecast his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – really, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater also.
The evident and clear reality that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a type of radical love centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been inspired to see the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided great solace to help build the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in numbers during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most damaging of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both meekness and faith, a mixture that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
