The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president started showing the public his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into a symbol of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, over decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your coat you should give them your pullover too.
The obvious and clear fact that the Savior from scripture advocates for a form of extreme compassion focused on the poor is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it mean feigning the most damaging about the nation and Christianity did not happen; it means both meekness and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
