First off
Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal socialist before the concepts were even invented. Black Lives Matter crowd? Jesus is in the crowd. Queers? Jesus is lovin’ up on all of them. Cakes? Jesus would have baked 5,000. Women terminating their pregnancy? Jesus is holding their hand. Immigrants? Jesus was one. Brown people? Jesus was one. (I lost some racists right there.) Brown children? Jesus would have left them in their parents’ arms.
Jesus didn’t say I will make you fishers of Constitutional Conservatives.
If you are Pastor of a church and call yourself a Conservative, Constitutional Conservative, Moderate Conservative, Compassionate Conservative or any other kind Conservative you might consider that you’re preaching the wrong Jesus and you should also consider getting into another line of work. If you’re encouraging unsafe medical practices like NOT wearing masks then you really really should quit and avoid any line of work where you have dominion over other humans.
Preach the teachings of Jesus
If you’re going to preach Jesus then preach Jesus: the real teachings of Jesus, the liberal teachings of Jesus. The Jesus that cares. The Jesus that didn’t back Caesar to gain political power. The socialist Jesus that told the rich guy to get rid of all of his possessions. The non-racist Jesus. The Jesus that said bring the little children to me.
That Jesus!
Johnny Cash
Conservative Pastors, like Republicans in office, believe that they have to pander to their Conservative constituents.
Conservative Pastors only face that if their congregation is a mixture of liberals and conservatives with undecideds mixed liberally or conservatively throughout. If they take too strong a position either way people leave the church so they just Johnny Cash it.
The state of affairs
On the one hand, we have Republican leaders afraid to speak their true feeling in public (though they will share them in private) because they are fearful of losing the support of Trump’s cult in their next election bid. On the other hand, we have Pastors fearful of losing their congregations if they don’t support Trump. They are putting fear of Trump before fear of the lord.
And on the other other hand we have the Evangelical Party that embraces the evil that is Trump in order to gain power by association.
Wait just a darn minute!
Okay I realize that we got to three hands here but I was on a roll with the ‘other hand’ imagery. I was trying to work in a little yin and yang to show some balance in the universe but I realize now that there really is no balance. I briefly considered using that little bird-in-the-hand-is-it-live-or-is-it-Memorex story but I think that people have just had enough of that story. So forging onward I will present the Evangelical Party and their support of President Donald Trump.
Now, about those Evangelicals.
They are taking it kind of hard. God let them down. That’s never easy. They bought into Trump completely. They lined up the troops and marched them in. They never dreamed that their “Chosen One” would lose. They didn’t believe it before the vote. They didn’t believe it after the vote. Ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone.
They may have to have their Republican allies in the Senate form a committee and start investigating why God let them down.
We aren’t privy to all those conversations that go on behind closed doors between Evangelicals, and Republicans. Being men and women of honor I feel quite certain that they would lie their asses off if asked about their true feelings in public. (There’s something not quite right with the previous sentence.) I say that because they’ve already done it. (Bob Woodward recorded his conversations with Republicans that he wrote about in his book and they still denied things.)
Evangelicals do the same thing. They just take a slightly different approach. They use Jesus in their denials of the obvious—that they supported an evil regime. They lied and continue to lie about Jesus.
They Lenny Bruced it. (1.31)
Baby steps
Some in the Evangelical Party are slowly coming to grips with the fact that Biden won. Ken Copeland is not one of them. I haven’t heard what Paula White is doing. Robert Jeffress takes a step forward and then backslides a little. We haven’t heard from Evangelical Pool Boy Falwell Jr. for awhile. And quite frankly I don’t want to know what….
….goes on behind his closed door.
They’ll have to admit that they elevated and worshiped a false idol—Trump. Some will just never do that. They’ll lick the wounds of the beast and go right back at their next targets. They are hot to make a few million women murderers. They’ll be looking for another “savior” another “Chosen One” in the political arena that they can give a thumbs up or down and then line up the cult behind them. They could try something novel.
Get with the real Jesus.