Already in the Trump era we have “Fake News” and “Alternative Facts,” both euphemisms for “lies.”
Now we have “Fake Christians,” but that phrase is one for which I am already grateful.
Pope Francis is the source. According to reports based on the Vatican Radio broadcast of his sermon this past Thursday, the Pope said that it would be better to be an atheist than a hypocritical Christian (although I suspect atheists didn’t appreciate the comparison).
It’s a scandal, he said, defining “scandal” as “saying one thing and doing another.” He believes that Catholics who do this are hurting the Christian faith.
Pope Francis speaks for all Christians when he describes hypocrisy as a “scandal” that does immense damage to the integrity of all Christians.
And I believe what he says applies to American Christians who think they can be Christian and also support who Donald Trump is and what he is doing.
It’s not possible.
Trump’s personal life, personal values, and the methods he is using to achieve his policy goals run counter to any informed and honest understanding of Jesus’ life and teachings.
All of us who are Christian fail to measure up in our personal lives to the example Jesus set so I am willing to cut Trump a measure of slack on that score, but not when it comes to his policy methods.
He has no excuse for what he is doing. The key to understanding why is the important distinction between goal and method.
The problem with Trump is not his policy goals because nearly all Americans want the same things he wants – secure borders, effective vetting of immigrants and refugees, healthcare for everyone, effective government protections in the marketplace, good jobs, good schools, and so forth.
Trump’s goals are not the problem. The ways he is going about them is.
His methods are wrong, ineffective, and in many instances, grossly immoral.
And that is what puts Christians on the line.
You cannot, for example, be a Christian and support a broad sweep “too bad if you’re caught regardless of your personal circumstances” round up of illegal immigrants in this country, some of whom have been here for 30 years.
These are not “bad dudes.” They are mothers and fathers who work every day to give their children a better life.
The tearing apart of families, leaving children born here without their parents, is an immoral act. They are here and the moral thing to do is to provide a path to citizenship for them that is tough, fair, just, and humane.
Yes, the people who came here illegally were wrong to do so, even if they had good reasons, but rounding them up like cattle and deporting them callously is worse.
No genuine Christian can support such an approach. Whatever justification given for supporting Trump’s approach to this very real problem does not change the fact that it is morally wrong to do what he is doing.
What makes it worse is that Trump’s words suggest that in reality he is simply playing politics with people’s lives to please his radical right constituency whose interests are being promoted by Steve Bannon, one of his primary policy advisors.
There are more just and right ways of dealing with illegal immigration than what Trump is doing, but he has chosen a “shock and awe” approach that makes it appear as if he is doing something dramatic to fulfill his campaign promises regardless of the consequences to people’s lives.
You cannot be Christian and support him doing that. You cannot.
Moreover, he makes matters worse with his name calling tweets of people who criticize him…his attacking the press and thereby attacking our democracy…his using doublespeak to hide nefarious intentions behind his methods…and his telling outright lies and then blaming someone else for them or attacking the news source that exposes him.
Only the most radical of Trump’s supporters can deny that in his first month of office he has managed to divide the nation more than it was and prompt non-partisan experts in every field to question why he is doing what he is doing.
Maybe, as he suggests, the fault lies with all the rest of us and not with Trump at all, but no one with any sense believes that.
What he is doing is predictable behavior because of his narcissism, which makes support of his methods by anyone, especially Christians, an enigma of all enigmas.
It is easy to lose sight of the fact that what happens here at home and the influence we have around the world matter to other nations. It should matter to us even more.
Yet we are acting as if it doesn’t.
How else can you explain the fact that as a nation we are a house divided against itself and it doesn’t seem to alarm us?
At the same time, being divided should not surprise anyone, not least Christians.
No government that pushes concern for social justice to the sidelines, enacts tax policies that perpetuate economic inequity, indirectly encourages radicalism and nationalism because of irresponsible political rhetoric, and has state governments passing laws that support discrimination and bigotry in the name of religious freedom, should ever expect to be united.
This makes support for unjust and immoral methods for enforcing government policies, and sometimes the policies themselves, by so many Christians all the more troubling.
They are adding to the divisions rather than doing anything to heal them.
What the words and wisdom of Pope Francis did for me this week is to serve as a sobering reminder that when it comes to applying the teachings of Jesus to everyday life, being Christian doesn’t simply mean anything anyone says it means.
Rather, the real truth is that when it comes to being Christian, there are moral lines Christians don’t cross, social and economic values we don’t embrace, government policies we don’t support, and methods of enforcement for those policies we find intolerable.
Thus far there is no indication of which I am aware that Christians who support Donald Trump believe that. They seem to believe, instead, that they won when Trump did.
They can believe that only if they have a warped understanding of what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God, or they believe political loyalties equal putting God first.
But it doesn’t really matter what they think.
You can be a “fake Christian” whether you believe you are or not.
linnposts.com 