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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumChristianity Today Editorial: Speak Truth to Trump
This article just got mentioned on MSNBC
Evangelicals, of all people, should not be silent about Donald Trump's blatant immorality.
<snip>
This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trumps past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquestindeed, sexual assaultmight have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.
Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the earthly nature (flesh in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trumps life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and ones desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.
And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.
<snip>
Most Christians who support Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the presidents power to appoint members of the Supreme Court. Important issues are indeed at stake, including the right of Christians and adherents of other religions to uphold their vision of sexual integrity and marriage even if they are in the cultural minority.
But there is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatryan attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strengththe chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Romeat the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of Gods manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it ultimately always fails.
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to usin hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.
<snip>
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october-web-only/speak-truth-to-trump.html
<snip>
This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trumps past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquestindeed, sexual assaultmight have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.
Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the earthly nature (flesh in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trumps life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and ones desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.
And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.
<snip>
Most Christians who support Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the presidents power to appoint members of the Supreme Court. Important issues are indeed at stake, including the right of Christians and adherents of other religions to uphold their vision of sexual integrity and marriage even if they are in the cultural minority.
But there is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatryan attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strengththe chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Romeat the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of Gods manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it ultimately always fails.
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to usin hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.
<snip>
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october-web-only/speak-truth-to-trump.html
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Christianity Today Editorial: Speak Truth to Trump (Original Post)
Renew Deal
Oct 2016
OP
PJMcK
(22,022 posts)1. Yet Donald Trump calls himself a Christian
Then again, lots of other hypocrites call themselves Christian, too.
A true Christian cannot support any Republican candidate for any office at any level of Federal, State or Local office. The GOP's policies are consistently anathema to the teachings of the carpenter from Nazareth.
The rank hypocrisy and blatant stupidity of so many so-called "Christians" is profoundly disturbing. How can these people look at themselves in the mirror?