I woke up early this morning. In fact, for some reason, every day for the last week or so, I have been waking up at 4:30am. I have tried to go back to sleep, but decided that God must be wanting me to get up early for something…maybe to finish a book I have been writing. So, this morning, I woke up at 4:30am, tried to go back to sleep, but then got up and did a little writing in my home office.
After some writing, I started reading some articles on Yahoo. I came across an editorial titled, “Franklin Graham’s God isn’t mine; is he yours?” The title caught my attention, and so I read the editorial. I disagreed with probably 90% of it. However, there is a paragraph from that editorial I want to share because I think it is important. I clearly stated, long before the election, that, as an evangelical Christian, I believed that if I voted for Donald Trump I would lose all moral authority to speak out for, or against, any social issues. People strongly disagreed with me. Since the election, I have stated the fact that 81% of evangelicals voted for Pres. Trump, and that by so doing, have damaged our witness to Christ. Again, people strongly disagreed with me. Well, read the paragraph below, and I think you will see why I stated what I stated. You may still disagree with me. But at least recognize that my opinions are not “ignorant” or “misguided.”
“It has always fascinated me that a God who Graham says is never-changing always finds a way to morph in ways that seem to parallel shifts in the Republican Party. The GOP targeted abortion in the 1970s; Graham’s God has been condemning abortion since. The GOP decided to view transgendered Americans as a grave threat to the social order; lo and behold, now so does Graham’s God. After the GOP says a thrice-married adulterous man caught on video bragging about casually sexually assaulting women – after spending years elevating a bigoted conspiracy about the nation’s first black president – is the perfect standard bearer for the party of values voters, Graham’s God miraculously sees past sins for which Donald Trump never repented and elevates him to the highest office in the land.”
Please understand, and I say this with a deep love, and a broken heart, for my own religious tribe – the evangelical church in the United States – I am disappointed, not that Donald Trump is president, (I could really care less, my citizenship is in another kingdom), but that we so easily cast aside our values and beliefs because we rationalized he was the lesser of two evils. I am upset, not over Trump, but with the church.
The evangelical church in the United States is in need of deep, deep reflection and repentance.
Floods of Justice 