No, we don't 'hate Trump'

I couldn’t care less about a leader’s temperament or his tone of his vocabulary. Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals. They don’t want Caspar Milquetoast as the leader of the free world. 

— The Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor, First Baptist Church of Dallas and supporter of President Donald Trump, as quoted in The Atlantic magazine 

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. 

— Jesus, recorded in Matthew 20:25-27

Some weeks ago a blogger named Mario Murillo complained about "Christians Who Hate Trump," as if opposing him was tantamount to opposing God. The screed, as many do, highlighted Trump's focus on "religious liberty" (read: maintenance of Christian privilege) and naming of a Supreme Court justice to overturn Roe v. Wade. Reading the piece, I could see his exasperation: In essence, "Don't you realize just how important these issues are?"

If these are the rewards for selling out Jesus Christ and His Gospel, no, nothing is that important, nor could it be. In fact, I would say that the 81 percent of white evangelical Christians who supported Trump for "religious" reasons have done more to damage Christian witness than anything their hated secularists could ever do.

And many of us who actually know the Bible in context understand this, which is why we highlight his adultery, lying and insulting of others who don't support his agenda as directly counter to Christian practice. We're supposed to "accept" these things from someone we support when, were they applied to someone we oppose, we would use the vilest epithets against them? Oh, heck, no.

I know what you might be saying: "Would you rather have Hillary Clinton as president?" Me personally, yes, as I did vote for her because I wanted someone who could actually do the job.

We don't hate Trump — really, we don’t. What we hate is having Jesus' Name dragged through the mud because of Christians' association with him, and it's driving away a large number of "millennial" folks out of the church who find the hypocrisy distasteful. And that more than anything else hurts the cause of Christ down the road.

That's why I posted the two quotes above, one from a political power-broker more concerned with saving his own authority and one from our LORD Himself, Who wasn't concerned with public morality as we understand it. Besides, such "revival," if that's what the religious right wants, comes from not top-down political campaigns but service to a dead and dying world.

Basically, Murillo and Jeffress miss the point of the Good News of Jesus Christ; in supporting such a divisive person, they stand guilty of a lack of trust in the God they say they worship. 

And I make no apologies for saying that. Nor should anyone else.