There Is Only One Jesus
So, on Tuesday, I looked at how both Left and Right claim to be acting in a Christian fashion and then called for a bit of humility. In that post I linked to an article on Don Lemon’s excruciating podcast interview in which he claimed a lot of Christianity is white supremist. But I missed his claim, in that same interview, that he was imitating Christ tearing up the Temple courtyard. I made specific reference to that Biblical incident in that post, but I had no idea Lemon was claiming it as justification for his actions. With this claim Lemon is saying, essentially, “I understand Jesus better than the people in that church do.” That’s a pretty astonishing claim, I just wish the Left’s claims to the only true Christian understanding ended there.
Yesterday, in the pages of The Atlantic, stepped Pete Wehner, formerly a frequent guest on the show and Republican presidential speechwriter, with an article under the rather self-important title, “MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus.” Well, I didn’t read it – can’t actually, it is behind the paywall and I won’t pay that particular publication, but the title itself is utterly and deeply offensive.
There are lots of #NeverTrump conservatives out there and Wehner is among them. Lots of them have objections to Trump’s presidency rooted in their faith. I have argued with prominent ones before. But this argument over “the real Jesus,” misses the point entirely.
Jesus is, among many things, revelation – God revealing Himself to us. To honestly think we can understand that is the height of hubris. As God instructed Isaiah to prophesy:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Any Christian worth the name knows better than to claim to understand “the real Jesus;” the real Jesus is beyond our understanding. And thus the need for the humility that I called for on Tuesday.
The subtitle to the Wehner’s piece is equally insulting, “Trump is causing incalculable damage to the Christian faith, yet most evangelicals will never break with him.” Trump is causing that damage? Trump?! Throughout history there have been sects and cults and offshoots and heretics that have attempted to do “incalculable” damage to Christianity, and yet here it stands, undeterred, after thousands of years. There is, no doubt, a cult of Trump that wraps itself in the flag and holds up the cross and claims Trump to be the second coming, but how is that any different than all those cults and sects that have come before it? It would seem Mr. Wehner is giving Mr. Trump far more credit than he deserves.
There is much in President Trump’s personal life, particularly prior to his entry in politics, and in his demeanor that is not Christ-like. And while Mr. Trump’s foibles are unique, that we have had prior presidents that did not live up to the Christian standard should not be news to anyone. We have had some presidents that thought Christians were problematic. Why then are Mr. Trump’s failures creating “incalculable damage” while they did not?
If President Trump, or any other president, has caused damage to Christianity, is that because of the president or because Christianity has permitted it? Christianity was born and blossomed in a time when government and culture was far, far more hostile to it than anything that exists today. If the church’s relationship with government is broken is the fix to change government, or the church? The church has survived thousands of years, under every conceivable form of government, some of them trying purposefully and violently to end it. And yet it stands. If this president is damaging the church that much, the fault is with the church, not this president, and if we want to fix it we ought to be shoring up the church, not decrying the government.
There is only one Jesus and none of us understands Him completely. The minute you lay claim to “the real” Jesus is the minute I know you have missed that part of the truth. Everyone has some piece of the puzzle and the minute you partition a group off as having a piece of a different puzzle is the minute you lose access to the piece they do have, and thus you can never complete the picture. That the church in America has issues is undeniable, but I don’t think Donald J. Trump is the real source of the problem.
The post There Is Only One Jesus appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
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