To quote The Freewheelin song by Bob Dylan,
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
After all, when Harvey Weinstein was outed as a sexual predator last week, righteous indignation compelled Hollywood actors to rebuke him. By contrast, when Donald Trump was outed as a sexual predator last year, political opportunism compelled evangelical Christians to embrace him.
But this oxymoronic state of moral consciousness is hardly surprising.
After all, here is a little of what I wrote in “Evangelicals Supporting Donald Trump like Israelites Worshiping Golden Calf,” January 20, 2016.
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I know Evangelicals. As the son of an evangelical preacher, I grew up amongst them. So trust me when I say that, for any sober Evangelical, Trump is the very personification of Mammon.
This, after all, is a man who takes diabolical pride in boasting that he never asks God for forgiveness because he’s without sin, he’s rich, and he’s like a god himself. He even boasts that The Art of the Deal, his book about the virtues of greed and the salvation of wealth, rivals the Bible.
Not to mention that he made most of his money building gambling casinos. Because gambling is as great a sin for most Evangelicals as usury is for most Islamists.
But Trump is probably best known for building a gilded tower in New York City as a monument to himself. And, given his delusions of grandeur, one could well imagine him challenging Jesus by channeling the Devil from atop that tower as follows:
Finally, the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain. He showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ‘If You bow down and worship me,’ he said, ‘I will give You all of this.’
(Matthew 4:8)
Of course, Jesus rebuked and then admonished the Devil to humble himself before God. You’d think Evangelicals would do what Jesus did, especially given that Trump challenges their Christian faith almost every day. Instead of rebuking and admonishing him, however, they invariably hail him as if he were, well, the second coming of Jesus Christ. …
Again, it would be one thing if Trump troubled himself to show a little regard for their purported Christian values. But mean-spirited, bullying, even profane language is the feature attraction of his campaign rhetoric, which makes a mockery of those values. …
Evangelicals are sacrificing their Christian faith at the altar of Trump’s political ambition. Moreover, they have ceded their moral authority to speak truth to power and champion family values until kingdom come. …
I am constrained to ask: What will it profit an Evangelical if he gains Trump as president, but loses his own soul?
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Meanwhile, these Trump-supporting Evangelicals are compounding their apostasy with hypocrisy. For only this explains them leading the chorus of those damning Weinstein’s liberal friends (in Hollywood and Washington) for not rebuking him … fast enough.
I fear a “jealous” God, so prone to “wrath,” cannot have mercy on their souls.
Related commentaries:
Evangelicals…
Weinstein…
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