Of Infidels And Pharisees

The video going around of Portland protesters burning Bibles is a sad sight in America. As a book lover, I’m aghast anytime anyone burns books, but especially when it is the Bible, the bestselling book of all time, and one that has helped countless people around the world come to grips with life, death, and the hereafter.

I’m willing to call the book-burning (and the book-burners) evil, but I have a problem with Mr. Starbuck’s claim that this election is good versus evil. Although Antifa can be legitimately called heathens or infidels, Antifa will not be on the ballot this November. In fact, the Democrat at the top of the ticket will be about as farthest thing from Antifa that any of the Democratic candidates could have been. Joe Biden is many things but it is difficult to paint him as an infidel.

I’ve heard many evangelical Christians say that Donald Trump is the “Christian” choice in the election, but is he really? Joe Biden has been a Christian of the Catholic faith for his whole life. He and his family are regular attendees at St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware and the former vice president’s faith seems to have been strengthened after the death of his son and first wife.

In contrast, Donald Trump seems to rarely attend church and understands little of Christian theology. In 2015, he said he has never asked for forgiveness, and the church that he said he attended denied that he was an “active member.” More recently, he appointed the heretical Paula White, a preacher of the “prosperity gospel,” to the head the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Mr. Trump has also frequently mocked the religious beliefs of others such as Mike Pence. In June, the president had protesters cleared from Lafayette Square in Washington, DC so that he could display a Bible in a photo op in front of St. John’s Church, but the church’s pastor noted that Trump neither entered the church nor prayed.

When pondering God’s will for the election, consider what Paul described as good and bad personality traits. Galatians 5:22-23 describes the fruits of the spirit. This a familiar verse for those of us who grew up in Sunday School.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

On the other hand, Paul described the evil character of people in the last days to his protege Timothy:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Which sounds more like Donald Trump?

“Yet I hold this against you,” Jesus might say to Joe Biden when it comes to Biden’s support for abortion. And for Christians on the right, abortion seems to trump (pun intended) all of the sins of right-wing politicians.

Some on the left try to argue a biblical case for abortion, but Jesus affirmed the Ten Commandments (Matt. 5:17-20), of which number six is “You shall not murder.” Jesus also preached that children should be protected, saying in Matthew 18:6-7, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Republican Christians are so locked into the abortion question that I got a lot of flack several years ago when I asked the question, “Can Christians be Democrats?” A lot of my readers argued that they could not and abortion was the biggest reason cited.

Yet, as I noted back then, about half of American Christians are not Republican. That includes the majority of black Americans, 80 percent of whom identify as Christian and 90 percent of whom are Democrat. Among the various denominations, only evangelical Protestants are significantly more Republican than Democrat. Does this mean that all of those Christian Democrats are going to hell?

Not if we believe in justification (salvation) by faith. And salvation by faith and not works is a fundamental tenet of Christian theology. Salvation is God’s free gift to man, we just have to accept it. So says the Bible.

The Republican Christian response is usually that “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16) and no true Christian would support the killing of unborn babies.

Okay, but shouldn’t we also judge Donald Trump and his enablers by their fruits as well? Remember that this is the Administration that purposely separated immigrant (and not just illegal ones) children from their parents as a punitive measure to discourage future asylum-seekers from coming to America. The separations were continuing this year per The Intercept and some children never seem to have been reunited with their parents despite court orders. What did Jesus say about protecting children again?

And when it comes to being pro-life, what of the current pandemic in which the Trump Administration has pushed schools to reopen for in-person classes as new cases and daily deaths climb and in which many Republican governors pushed their states to reopen too early? Many Republicans refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing to slow the spread of the virus and Texas’s Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, suggested that seniors should be willing to die for the economy. Are these actions pro-life or Christian?

If we have the infidels on one side, I think we have latter-day Pharisees on the other extreme. This group of biblical Jewish teachers and scholars was known for being hardhearted and legalistic. Jesus denounced the Pharisees, who practiced a public and showy religion but were inwardly cold, on many occasions.

Interestingly, Jesus sat down regularly with heathens and sinners such as prostitutes, tax collectors, adulterers, and criminals, but he seemed to hold the Pharisees in contempt. He referred to the Pharisees as “hypocrites” and a “brood of vipers” in Matthew 23 and suggested that they did not know God, being “like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

I’m not saying that any Christian who votes for Donald Trump is not a Christian and is going to hell. That would be the same works-righteousness argument that we discussed earlier.

What I am saying is that we are faced with the choice of two different versions of evil. Those who want to vote for Trump can certainly do so without sacrificing their salvation but let’s not pretend that Donald Trump is a holy warrior on whom the fate of the country rests. If you are putting your faith in a man as flawed and incompetent as President Trump – if you are putting your faith in a man period – you are going to be disappointed. This is especially true if your devotion to the man crosses over to idolatry as it seems to for many Trump supporters.

The same goes for the Supreme Court and abortion. Even Donald Trump’s appointees have not changed the balance of the Court on abortion. What has brought abortion in the US to a historic low over the past five decades are grassroots efforts at love and education, not top-down edicts from the government.

I don’t believe that either party has a lock on God’s favor. In the end, infidels and Pharisees are just different forms of sinners.

In the end, love is what the Bible tells us to do. The object of our love is not just those who think and look like us but our enemies as well (Matthew 5:44). Neither side shows the love that Christ taught and too many on both sides are representative of Paul’s resounding gongs and clanging cymbals.

Originally published on The Resurgent

David French Was Right

Over at The Dispatch, David French penned a Sunday piece called “Evangelicals Have Abandoned the Character Test. The Competence Test is Next.” Unsurprisingly, it centered on Donald Trump and his relationship with the white evangelical community. I could go into a lot of detail about French’s argument, but I’ll cut to the chase and say he’s absolutely right.

It isn’t news that the evangelical right, which for years had said, “Character counts,” gave character the heave-ho when it became inconvenient at helping them elect Republicans. This was not an isolated occurrence in 2016, it has been an ongoing decision since then as the president lies and gets away with things that no other president would dare do, all with the overwhelming and unwavering support of evangelicals who now argue that “We didn’t elect a national pastor.” (Full disclosure: I was raised as a Southern Baptist and am still a member of a Southern Baptist church.)

French concentrates heavily on Trump’s incompetence in dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic in making his case. I’ve covered some aspects of the president’s poor handling of the crisis as well, but new information on the lackluster early federal reaction is still coming out. But really, did you have to wait until the pandemic to see that Trump was incompetent?

Donald Trump has had precious few successes and most of those have relied upon executive power. His sole major legislative accomplishment, tax reform, was passed without a single Democratic vote. Since then, the president has relied on circumventing Congress rather than working with it. So much for his vaunted reputation as a dealmaker.

In fact, if we look at tactics and strategies rather than policy positions, Donald Trump closely resembles Barack Obama, a president reviled by the same white evangelicals that love Trump. Both presidents were intentionally divisive and sought to use divide and conquer strategies to fire up their partisan bases rather than building broad coalitions. Both proved utterly incapable of forging bipartisan agreements for the good of the country. Neither respected the constitutional limits on presidential powers and pushed the boundaries of executive actions. Both presided over large expansions of government and federal spending. Both men’s egos wrote checks that their abilities could not cash.

The difference is that white evangelicals support one and not the other. Some would say that the difference is the color of Obama’s skin, but I don’t believe that. I think the answer is simply that Trump tells evangelicals what they want to hear on a few key issues and, in exchange, they reward him with loyalty on everything else.

When you speak to evangelical voters, two factors trump all else when it comes to Donald Trump. The first is abortion and the second is the Supreme Court. The Bible says that “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8), but for evangelical voters, spouting pro-life platitudes and appointing conservatives to the bench covers even more. Trump’s evangelical base will support him on whatever he does because “at least he’s pro-life.”

For Trump’s evangelical fans, saying pro-life things covers the failed North Korean nuclear talks, the fact that Obamacare is still unrepealed and unreformed, that Planned Parenthood is still funded, the trade war that has done so much to hurt American manufacturing and farmworkers, and a foreign policy that is even weaker than Obama’s. It also extends to cover abuses of power and criminal acts such as obstructing federal investigations. It will cover the death toll of the Coronavirus and Trump’s misinformation on the pandemic.

The one area where I can find disagreement with French is that white evangelicals are not about to abandon the competence test. They have already done so enthusiastically.

Everyone except the True Believers (in Trump, not God) knows that Donald Trump is incompetent. Many members of his own Administration have openly said so and the proof is in the pudding of his Administration’s poor performance. Evangelicals know it, but as in the story of the emperor’s new clothes, they are afraid to say it. Instead, they embrace the fiction that Trump is playing blindfolded underwater 6D chess or whatever level we are up to this week.

Believing that Trump is competent requires one to believe that everyone is incompetent or corrupt, giving rise to new conspiracy theories from the Deep State to Q. Everyone from Fauci to the FBI must be corrupt and trying to undermine Trump and launch a coup to destroy America.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Christians could be misled and steered astray. After all, a fundamental Christian doctrine is that men are fallible and prone to sin, selfishness, and bad decisions. In fact, the Bible warns us to guard against leaders who tell us what we want to hear (in Matthew 24:24, 2 Timothy 3:13, and 1 John 2:3-11 to name a few verses).

There are reasons to vote for Donald Trump, just as there are many reasons to vote against him. For people who assume that elections are binary choices, Hillary versus Trump was a choice between two evils. As French posits, however, the bigger problem than the initial Trump vote is that white evangelicals no longer see Donald Trump as an evil. They support him wholeheartedly and excuse his bad behavior rather than holding him accountable.

That brings to mind another Bible verse that I’ll close with. Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Believing In Christmas Is Logical

I have a confession to make. I doubt sometimes.

I was raised in a Baptist church. I was in one of the families that, if church was being held, we were there. I was saved at an early age and grew up believing without question. For many years, I never seriously considered the possibility that God was not real or that the Bible was not accurate.

A few years ago, that changed for a couple of reasons. First, I started a job and had a coworker who was an atheist. The nature of flying jobs is that you spend a lot of time with the other crewmembers and get to know them very well. On long trips, the two of us spent a lot of time talking, solving the world’s problems and discussing the nature of God and religion.

They say that it isn’t polite to discuss politics and religion, but that is because too many people can’t disagree agreeably. My atheist friend, who I’ll call Rob, and I were different. We both liked logic and reason and could have long discussions over difficult topics in a calm manner. Sometimes we would agree and sometimes we would agree to disagree.

Rob was unlike the stereotypical atheists. He was sympathetic to religion, once telling me that he wanted to believe but simply could not. Still, he saw the value of religion as a tool for instilling morality, which he thought made the world a better place. When our families had dinner together and my kids said the blessing, he bowed his head in a very unatheistic manner along with the rest of us.

In fact, Rob, despite his atheism, was one of the most moral and charitable people that I’ve ever known. He was generous to a fault and always ready to help others who were in need. As we walked around various cities on layovers, he would frequently give money to homeless people. I remember more than once watching him slip money into the pockets of people sleeping on the street. His charitable heart put me to shame.

Rob was an analytical guy. In his examination of spiritual matters, he ultimately came to the conclusion that the universe and mankind were the result of random chance. We discussed the astronomical odds against the earth forming just at the right spot in a solar system and orbiting just the right type of star to allow life to develop as well as the minuscule chance that evolution would blindly steer developing life into a higher intelligence. He acknowledged the slim probabilities but maintained that the one chance out of billions was the number that had come up.

The second factor in my questioning was my diagnosis with skin cancer. I wrote about my stage one melanoma after it was removed almost two years ago now. While my cancer experience was much less traumatic and invasive than many, it was the first time that I had faced a real health crisis that could have killed me. In the wake of the melanoma, I realized with my gut what I had known intellectually for years: that death could come at any time.   

With that realization and with my place in eternity on the line, I didn’t want to trust blindly in a religion that I’d never really tested. If we do due diligence before buying a house or car or committing to a new job, shouldn’t we research our religious beliefs? If God is real, what we believe about him and what we do about those beliefs is the most important decision of our lives.

Religion is really a two-fold question. The first question is whether God exists. The second, in a world with many different religions preaching wildly diverging beliefs, is which is the most correct and appropriate path to God.

Logically, there are three possible outcomes. The first possibility is that there is no God, in which case, the whole point is moot. The second possibility is that there is a God but you pick the wrong belief system, which could be disastrous for your soul. Finally, the third possibility is that there is a God and you choose wisely with the result being that you spend eternity in heaven. This is the optimal outcome, but it is especially important to avoid the second.  

There are many evidences for God including the improbability that random chance got us to where we are, but one of the most interesting to me is a scientific study in which British researchers found evidence that consciousness continues after death. The AWARE study found that 40 percent of patients with cardiac arrest were conscious while they were clinically dead and prior to resuscitation. Dr. Sam Parnia pointed out that the memories described by the patients were not merely hallucinations but “detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.”

So, I did what countless people down through history have done before me. I questioned God and put him and the Bible to the test. I looked at other religions to see how they compared. I read about ancient history and the documentary evidence for the Bible. I read about the problems and inconsistencies in the Bible. I wrote about this spiritual journey in another article after I came to the conclusion that God is real and the Bible is as true as imperfect humans can make it.

“The Bible As History” by Werner Keller became one of my new favorite books. I was astonished at how much archaeology backed up Biblical accounts. Although direct archaeological support for the Flood and the Exodus are still scant at this point, there is an abundance of evidence for Israel’s kingdom period. Further, over the past few years, I’ve watched as reports of new discoveries roll in that lend more support to Biblical claims. Although the Flood and the Exodus are difficult to prove, they are also difficult to disprove.

Two other very good books, Lee Strobel’s “The Case For Christ” and Warner Wallace’s “Cold Case Christianity,” built a similar case for the validity of the New Testament. Both men began their investigations as skeptics and ultimately found that the evidence for the God of the Bible was so strong that they became believers.

In contrast, the skeptical claims against the Bible crumbled as I investigated them. Prophecies from Islam seemed vague and unfulfilled compared with those of the Bible. There seems to be no archaeological support at all for the Book of Mormon. Other religions teach that good works earn your way into heaven or that people sent to hell are given a second chance. The lack of exclusivity from these religions argues against them. If they are true and you don’t pick them, it’s no harm and no foul. Atheist claims often seem to rely on the position that they cannot understand God and therefore deny his existence or, as with Rob, hold that natural processes, however improbable, must be true.  

But Christianity is different. It claims to be an exclusive path to God. It also has both archaeological and documentary evidence to back up its claims. If Christianity is true and you don’t pick it, you’ve missed the boat.

The evidence for Christianity is not limited to scholarly works and logical reasoning, however. There have been many instances in my life where there has been evidence of the supernatural. I described in the discussion of my melanoma how a prophetic dream led me to the doctor after several dermatologists had ignored the cancer on my face. My wife and I also once experienced what seems to have been a physical manifestation of a spirit that left a mark on her body with no physical explanation.

I discussed all this with Rob, who said that he wished he could have similar experiences and then maybe he could believe too. In Rob’s case, the resistance to belief seemed to be rooted in a bad experience with the church from years earlier. This was a tragic example of how hypocrisy and bad behavior by God’s people can undermine the Gospel.

My experience with Rob is one reason that I’ve been so critical of the church’s support for Donald Trump. Rob’s belief was made even more difficult by what he saw as hypocrisy in supporting a man whose life and actions contradicted their beliefs and principles.

So why am I writing this on Christmas Eve? A common theme for generations has been that the original Christmas gifts were God’s gift of his son Jesus (“Yeshua” in his original language) to save mankind and the offer of forgiveness for our sins. It’s true that these gifts form the foundation of both Christmas and Christianity in general, but modern seekers are not limited to the Biblical narrative.

Another Christmas gift that God has given to 21^st-century seekers is the gift of accumulated science and scholarship that backs up the first century Gospels. We have at our disposal 2,000 years of research that can help us determine that God’s gift of Jesus and his offer of forgiveness are true and our only hope of salvation.

The tragedy is that all too often the actions of Christians alienate seekers like Rob. Emotional reactions to hypocrisy and bad behavior can trump the objective truth of the evidence. All believers should strive to not be the reason that people turn away from God and should pray for those like Rob who have been led astray.

Even with all I’ve experienced and read, sometimes faith doesn’t come easy. But questioning God is not sinful and can ultimately make your faith deeper. Sometimes belief is more of a choice than an emotional response.

Jesus told Thomas, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” Today, we can’t physically see Jesus face-to-face, but we can see the evidence of his existence and his actions more than any other generation since that of Thomas and the other disciples. We just have to look at the evidence and decide how to react to it.

Merry Christmas.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Just Say 'No' To The 'Book Of Trump'

Sometimes Trump supporters are compared to cultists. In many cases, the comparison is unfair, but sometimes, as an outside observer looking in on the MAGA movement, you have to shake your head in amazement. That was the case last week when Miriam Adelson, wife of billionaire Republican political donor, Sheldon Adelson, called for the addition of the “Book of Trump” to the Bible.

In an op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mrs. Adelson celebrated President Trump’s pro-Israel policies. In her piece, which stops short of extolling his godly virtues, she compares Trump to Esther, the Biblical queen who saved the Jews from a genocide at the hands of Haman, an evil advisor to the king of Persia.

Noting that Trump is still not widely supported by American Jews, Adelson writes, “Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes, sages, and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up.”

“Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’ celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?” she asks. “Until that is decided, let us, at least, sit back and marvel at this time of miracles for Israel, for the United States, and for the whole world.”

The answer to that question is, of course, yes. It would be much too much to amend the Bible so that it sings the praises of Donald Trump. The very fact that the question is asked seems to indicate that something is deeply amiss within the Republican Party. There are many reasons why there will never be a Book of Trump, not least of which is that the Old Testament canon was established hundreds of years before the time of Christ. More than that, making Donald Trump the object of holy devotion seems antithetical to the teachings of the Bible.

The consecration of Donald Trump is not limited to Adelson, who is Jewish, but also occurs in evangelical circles as well. I described several months ago how Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress led his church in a “Make America Great Again” hymn and attacked Christians who were not on the Trump train. Likewise, Franklin Graham has called upon Christians to pray for Trump to triumph over his enemies and said that “God was behind the last election.”

In some cases, Trump supporters go beyond equating Trump with Esther or King David and make him equal to Jesus himself. Just ahead of the 2018 election, a billboard in St. Louis pictured Trump with the caption, “The Word became flesh - John 1:14,” a messianic reference to Jesus Christ. The first chapter of John begins with the statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” An ebook on Amazon is titled “Donald 'MESSIAH' Trump: The Man, the Myth, the Messiah?” and asks if the president is the “Last Trump of God.”

The message is also carried forth by many rank and file Trump supporters. If you have ever frequented pro-Trump social media groups, you have probably seen memes like this one depicting Christ guiding President Trump’s hand as he signs documents in the Oval Office or this photo of a Trump supporter wearing a shirt that reads, “Jesus died for you, Trump lives for you.” Some of the social media content is satirical, some is not, and it is often difficult to tell the difference. The tendency of the Trump movement to deify the object of its obsession is so widespread and so transparent that it has inspired articles in GQ and Psychology Today as well as on Christian sites such as Red Letter Christians.

Just last week, a Michigan couple held a MAGA-themed, July 4 wedding in which the groom wore his Marine dress uniform and the bride wore a wedding gown crafted from a “Make America Great Again” flag. Bridesmaids wore red MAGA hats with the exception of the maid of honor, a Democrat who wore a plain red cap instead. While the article does not identify the religious beliefs of the couple, marriages have traditionally been a covenant between man, woman, and God rather than man, woman, and president.

While some on the right have argued that Democrats have become secular and replaced God with quasi-worship of the state or an environmental religion centered on climate change. Now it seems that some Republicans, either because they are either secular themselves and lack a focus for the innate human need to worship God or because they are simply misguided and perhaps Biblically illiterate, have replaced God with Donald Trump.

I am not going to spend time itemizing Donald Trump’s continuing unchristian behavior or rehash the fact that, as recently as the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was at best a nominal Christian who said he had never prayed for forgiveness and who was simultaneously lying about hush money payments to a porn star with whom he had cheated on his pregnant wife. I am also not going to suggest that every Trump supporter literally worships the president, although some certainly seem to do so.

What I am going to do is point back to the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Putting President Trump on par with God and Jesus is literally placing a false god before the real one. Even putting partisan politics ahead of worshipping God is worshipping an idol. Further, Jesus himself warned against false prophets. In his Mount Olivet discourse, Christ said that at the end of the age “false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). That day may have come.

As Bobby Azarian wrote in Psychology Today, “No one is infallible, no one is free from bias, and no one is honest all of the time, no matter how hard they may strive,” a statement that echoes the Christian doctrine of the depravity of man, the idea that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

“When you believe that someone is truly a godsend, you can excuse anything,” Azarian warns. “It all becomes ‘for the greater good.’ And when that happens, it is a slippery slope to gross abuses of power that continuously increase in magnitude.”

If such adoration was aimed at Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, conservatives and Republicans would rightly ridicule it and those who practice it. The response should be no different because the object of affection of these Trump supporters is a Republican president. No American should bend a knee before a leader of either party and Christians should only kneel to worship Christ. Whether Trump-worship is an actual cult or merely a cult of personality, worship of a president does not bode well for either the Republican Party or the American Republic.

Can Christians Be Democrats?

From time to time, the Resurgent writers have some spirited discussions in the back room. That was the case this week after Steve Berman posted his compelling idea for a Christian political party. Eventually, the conversation wound its way around to whether Christians could be Democrats (or vice versa).

The question of Christians and Democrats is not a new one in conservative Christian circles and there is a legitimate question of how Christians can align with a party that supports abortion on demand, rejects Biblical teaching on sexuality and gender, and even goes so far as to support the persecution of their fellow Christians. Often, the assumption from the Christian right is that when it comes to the Democratic Party all Christians have left the building.

As the saying goes, however, when we assume it makes Christ’s mode of transportation into Jerusalem out of you and me. It turns out that there are a lot of self-identified Christians who still consider themselves to be Democrats. A Pew poll of voters in the 2018 midterm elections found that the partisan split among Christians is much more even than you might think. The poll, which breaks down Christians into “Protestant/other” and “Catholic” found that Protestants favor Republicans by a 56-42 margin while Catholics are almost evenly split between the two parties. Party preference of Christians has not changed appreciably in the midterms dating back to 2006.

These numbers might shock many political observers, especially considering the Republican Party’s party’s self-proclaimed status as the Christian Party, but they shouldn’t. As a matter of simple math, black voters lean Democrat by about 90 percent and about 80 percent of blacks identify as Christian.  

Even beyond black Christian voters, who are concentrated heavily in traditional black Protestant denominations, another Pew poll found that most branches of Christianity are more Democrat than Republican. Only Evangelical Protestants are significantly more Republican than Democrat (56 percent), but even then a large minority of evangelicals (28 percent) are Democrat. (Mormons also favor Republicans by 70-19 percent, but I consider them distinct from traditional Christians.) Catholics, historically Black Protestant denominations (such as African Methodist Episcopal and Christian Methodist Episcopal), and Orthodox Christians all lean Democrat. Mainline Protestants are almost evenly split at 44-40 percent with a slight Republican edge. The bottom line is that Republican Christianity is very white and evangelical.

So, a lot of Democrats claim to be Christian. Are they really? After all, how could any Christian support something as heinous as New York’s new abortion law that permits killing full-term unborn babies?

I agree that is a valid question. I’ve known some pro-choice Christians including an ultrasound technician who worked for the OB/GYN who delivered my son. Her rationale was that she didn’t think that parents should have children if they didn’t want them and that abortion was needed to prevent child abuse.

Let me stop right there and say that her argument was not logical and does not withstand factual scrutiny. First, it is abhorrent to think that killing a baby is preferable to birthing an unwanted child. If only planned children were born, the world’s population would probably die out fairly quickly. America’s position as a world leader is already in danger from our declining birth rate. Her assumption also presupposes that parents will never grow to love and appreciate an unwanted child. In the second place, even not considering that abortion is child abuse in and of itself, child abuse rates have risen by more than 500 percent since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Finally, adoption is available as a nonlethal alternative to parents who don’t want to be responsible for their children.

The truth, however, is that a lot of Christians support abortion. Turning to yet another Pew poll (Pew is great for in-depth looks at religion), we see that majorities of most Christian demographics are in favor of legal abortion. Despite the prominence of the Catholic Church in the pro-life movement, Catholics are evenly split on the issue. Even 33 percent of evangelicals are in favor of abortion. At 60 percent, mainline Protestants are the most pro-choice.

The question remains whether support for abortion and the other anti-Christian planks of the Democratic platform are enough to deny salvation to those who believe in Christ. Is being wrong on a political issue and voting for the wrong candidate enough to jeopardize your soul?

The Bible teaches that the way to salvation is to acknowledge that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) and under a sentence of death for our transgressions (Romans 6:23). The Biblical formula for salvation is to publicly accept Jesus Christ as your savior and believe that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9-10). Everyone who accepts Christ’s offer of salvation gets it (Romans 10:13). That’s it. Bottom line. Case closed.

But wait, you say, what about Matthew 7:16 where Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits?” Doesn’t that mean that Christians who produce rotten fruit aren’t Christian at all? In the preceding verse, Jesus says to “beware of false prophets” so it isn’t clear from the context that this verse was intended to be directed at lay believers, particularly those whose sin is something so tenuous and indirect as voting for the wrong candidate.

There are numerous Bible verses that make it clear that salvation is based on nothing more than our faith and God’s grace. Other than accepting or rejecting Jesus Christ, there is nothing that we can do or not do that would affect our salvation.

Granted, James does argue that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26), but this is an argument that faith should spur good works, not that salvation is dependent on works. In verse 22, James makes this clear when he says, “faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect.”

Some Christians argue that Christians who vote Democrat are either not Christians at all or are backslidden Christians who are ignoring God’s will. This is an example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy in which a blanket statement is rendered unfalsifiable because a true example can’t be found, similar to the argument that communism works but that “true communism” has never been tried.

I’m not prepared to consign anyone who votes Democrat to hell and others should be cautious in doing so as well. Matthew 7:1-3 warns, “With what judgment you judge, you will be judged.” Are Republican Christians really eager to have God judge them based on their voting habits?

I have a good friend who is an atheist. In 2016, we discussed the nomination of Donald Trump at length and my friend was dumbfounded that conservative Christians in the Republican Party would rally around a man who was unfaithful to his wives (Matthew 5:32, 1 Timothy 3:2), was the owner of casinos (Proverbs 28:19), was sexually immoral (Romans 13:13), who cheated in business dealings (Proverbs 20:23), who was a bigot (Galatians 3:28),who was coarse and vulgar (Ephesians 5:4), who was insulting (Proverbs 15:1), who was unforgiving (Luke 6:32-42), and who was a habitual liar (Proverbs 26:28). When Christians responded to Trump’s faults in 2016 by saying that they weren’t voting for a national pastor, one wag responded that it was a good thing because they couldn’t get much further from pastor material than Donald Trump.

Jesus didn’t command Christians to vote for a fifth conservative justice on the Supreme Court or to block Hillary. He did command us to make disciples and teach the nations “to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:16-20). Have Republican Christians fulfilled this commandment in their embrace of Donald Trump? It’s more likely that as conservative Christians have become more political they have alienated more lost people and contributed to America’s moral decline. The Christian right certainly didn’t help me win my friend to Christ.

Many Christians supported the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy of separating children of illegal immigrants from their families as a tactic to discourage illegal immigration. Even some legal asylum-seekers were separated from their children. How can this intentional abuse of post-born children with Jesus’ admonitions to love and protect children (Matthew 18:2-10) as well as Old Testament instructions to treat foreigners fairly (Deuteronomy 10:19)? Enforcing the law is one thing, but intentionally treating migrants harshly is something quite different. This is especially true when some of the families may never be reunited.

  

Some Republicans have gone even further and replaced Jesus with Donald Trump. Some Republicans have made comparisons not only between Donald Trump and the Biblical Kings David and Cyrus but between Trump and Jesus Christ himself. In 2017, conservative artist Jon McNaughton painted a picture of Donald Trump that depicted the president standing on a dead snake’s head, a clear reference to messianic prophecy (Genesis 3:15). Just before the 2018 elections, a group posted a billboard near St. Louis that depicted President Trump and said, “The Word became flesh… - John 1:14” with the slogan, “Make the Gospel great again.” In that verse, “the Word” is Jesus. The Washington Times even ran a Thanksgiving piece titled, “Time to give thanks for all God, Trump have provided.” Social media is replete with memes and videos comparing Donald Trump to Jesus, some are satirical and some are serious and it can be hard to tell which is which, but equating Donald Trump, a mortal man, with the son of God is heretical as well as being a violation of the First Commandment (Exodus 20:3).

It boils down the fact that conservative Christians who judge Democratic Christians are making the same error as liberals who claim that conservatives don’t care about [insert interest group here] because they don’t sign on to liberal policy prescriptions. No one knows what is in someone else’s heart. Their salvation is between them and God.

It seems that neither party can really be termed a Christian party even though Christians support both parties. I tend to think of the Democrats as heathens and Republicans as Pharisees. Democrats don’t seem to know or care what the Bible says while some Republicans have replaced Christian love with legalism and others have moved all the way to idol worship. Together, the two branches of political Christianity sound like the lukewarm church of Revelation 3.

Thank God that our salvation does not depend upon ourselves! We would all be in deep trouble if it were up to us to earn or keep salvation through our own good works in a fallen world that is filled with temptation.

So how would Jesus vote? It seems that both parties have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I’m not sure that Jesus would vote at all. He was focused on the kingdom of heaven rather than the kingdoms of men. I’m certain that Jesus would mourn for the hundreds of thousands of murdered American babies, but I’m also certain that he would weep for the young children ripped from the arms of their parents.

I think the key is in Abraham Lincoln’s answer to the question of whether he thought God was on the side of the Union. Lincoln replied, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Christians should put aside their partisan filters and make sure they are on God’s side.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Born To Die

Almost everyone is familiar with the Christmas story. The tale of how Mary and Joseph were turned away from the inn and gave birth to the Son of God in a stable is traditional holiday fare. Even those who consider the story to be a myth have at least heard it and recognize the characters.

That familiarity can be a problem. Many of us have heard the tale so often that it loses its impact. We have heard the story for so many Christmases now that it becomes part of the background, like Christmas carol muzak in a department store or mall, and we fail to appreciate the impact of Christmas.

The real impact of Christmas lies beyond the manger scene. Christmas is really about what the newborn infant would do some 30 years later as an adult.

Christmas reminds me of the scene in Talladega Nights in which Will Ferrell leads his family in a mealtime grace, addressing the prayer to “little baby Jesus.” Baby Jesus in the manger is a nonthreatening image that is easy to celebrate because a newborn infant is not controversial and makes no demands of us.

The problem with limiting our view of Christmas to the manger scene is that the babe in the manger came to shake things up and make difficult demands of us. The newborn baby was an infant on a mission. The baby Jesus was born to die.

If we fast forward about 30 years to see the ministry of the adult Jesus, we would get two central themes to his message. One, that we should love our fellow man, is another common Christmas theme. As Bill and Ted put it, Jesus taught that we should “be excellent to each other.”

But Jesus’ second theme is even more important. Beyond loving others, Jesus taught that we should love the God who created us and seek after him.

In fact, the most important message from Jesus’ preaching can be distilled down to two verses. In John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” In this verse, Jesus made the controversial and earthshattering claim that he is God. A few chapters later in John 14:6, he made another extraordinary claim. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus said. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” In two short statements, Jesus overturned the conventional wisdom that priests and sacrifices were needed to approach God.

Jesus’ statements were either the ravings of a madman or the herald of a new way of looking at life and God. After a few short years of itinerant preaching, he would be executed by the Romans with the complicity of Jewish leaders. Far from being a tragedy, however, Jesus’ death sealed his victory. It was why he had come in the first place. As Jesus had previously explained to his disciples, he “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

You see, like Jesus, we are also born to die. I once saw a t-shirt that said, “Life is sexually transmitted and always fatal.” We are dying from the day we are born.

Unlike Jesus, who as the Son of God holds the ultimate power over death, we are its mercy. As sinners, we are doomed to eternal separation from God as punishment for our misdeeds. It is in this realization that Jesus’ mission is made clear. He did not come to bring world peace or military triumph. Contrary to what prosperity gospel preachers say, he did not come to give his followers worldly wealth or to heal the sick. Even though he is capable of doing all these things, Jesus came to give us a chance at eternal life and the ability to triumph over death.

Christmas is about hope. The hope that would ultimately be fulfilled by the adult Jesus on the cross. The baby in the manger would grow up to sacrifice his life for ours, but the gift of sacrifice must be accepted.

While the baby in the manger makes no demands of us, the resurrected Jesus who died on the cross demands that we put aside all other paths to God, believe in him, and make him Lord of our lives. In return, we receive salvation and eternal life, the ultimate Christmas gifts. 

Originally published on The Resurgent