I’ve read this story before. It doesn't end well.
As a Christian for most of my life and a pastor for nearly three decades, I'm quite familiar with the Old Testament narrative: supposedly faithful people fashioning an idol made of gold and cravenly bowing before it, in complete contempt for the God they claimed to believe in because they had lost their collective minds.
This new American reboot is a little on the nose.It's also far more tragic.We've had a few thousand years to get it right.We shouldn't be here.
Watching the corporate soul-selling of Christians here in America over the past ten years has been something that has grieved me more than I can measure or accurately describe.
Particularly disheartening has been watching ancient religious history repeating, and worse: to realize that nearly every national sickness here in America, from the brazen parade of white nationalism, to the dehumanization of immigrants, to the violent persecution of the LGBTQ community, to the defiant anti-vax science deniers, to the suppressors of votes of people of color, to the legislative assaults on women, to the proliferation of guns. to the embrace of authoritarianism—is coming from professed Christians.
As someone still aspiring to a life of faith and still trying to speak into my religious tradition, it's sobering to admit that we're not here as a nation in this brutal battle for disparate humanity and not steeped in this unapologetic white supremacy, if not for people claiming to be devoted to the same Jesus I've grown up trying to emulate.
As they pledge their undying adoration to some golden-veneered, bastardized counterfeit idol of their pigmentation, I'm left to wonder what decent human beings aspiring to Jesus’ teachings do now.
Do we attempt to redeem this thing we have found such meaning and beauty in, or do we resign ourselves to the fact that these phobic cultists have commandeered it for good, and it is beyond repair in the eyes of those outside of it?
Do we make an exodus from our homelands of origin and begin down a new spiritual journey, while knowing it will be nearly impossible to differentiate ourselves from the sycophantic idol worshippers because they have permanently co-opted the trappings of our tradition?
And how can we show the world an alternative spirituality that is supposed to leave more compassion, more diversity, and more justice in its wake, while these delusional power-lusting hypocrites eat up market share, because otherwise decent, loving human beings are walking away from organized religion for good, because they are fully exhausted?
The questions far outnumber any helpful answers, and the prayers seem to slip into the ether without reply.
Having read and studied and preached the story doesn't make watching it repeat itself any easier.
I know that in the Bible, religious people ended up abandoning God and mindlessly worshiping a golden calf, so it shouldn't be surprising that so many today are now bowing down to this orange jackass. It's just more terrifying living through the sequel.
It was a lot easier to view the tragic story in the distant rear-view mirror of history in a land thousands of miles away—and not in the windshield of the present here in the country I call home, with the sycophantic cultists so close and prevalent.
While they whirl around the gleaming, empty shell, celebrating themselves and their imagined righteousness, shouting 'God bless America,' I'll be here sitting with a mournful truth that makes me sick to my stomach: they’d have hated the Jesus of the Scriptures.
The mess this nation is in isn’t Jesus’ fault, but it is the fault of those claiming to follow him, and that’s something I can’t fathom or deny. Many decent, compassionate Christians ask me how we fix it, and I’m not sure that’s within my capacity to answer.
One thing I know for certain: I will not join them in their mindless, fevered dancing.
I will not bow to this empty, shimmering monstrosity of Christian nationalism.
I’ll stand with those who reject a religion that seeks to harm and exclude.
Together, we will help throw this homegrown golden idol into the fire and name it as the vile heresy it is.
We will embody a faith of love that does the healing and repairing and protecting that love is supposed to do.
And together, with our work and our lives and our activism, we will write a different story.
If you’re a Christian or you still aspire to the teachings of Jesus, how do you process these days in America? How are you navigating them as a person of faith? What do you believe is the future of organized Christianity? Is the faith able to transcend its MAGA commandeering? Let me know in the comments.
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