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Mike Pence illustrates the hypocrisy of Right Wing Conservative politicians who are taking advantage of the gullibility of evangelical voters.
Mike Pence using the faith of evangelicals to vote against their interests
Mike Pence in his speech shows how little he thinks about the intelligence of his followers as he tells them they saw a Trump apology never given. Using his voters’ faith against them was obscene.
“We are called to live godly lives,” Mike Pence said. “But also recognize that we all fall short. And it is not about condoning what is said and done. It is about believing in grace and forgiveness. As Christians, we are called to forgive even as we have been forgiven. And I would submit to you last Sunday night my running mate showed humility. He showed what was in his heart to the American people. And then he fought back and turned the focus to the choice we face. And it is a more dramatic choice in any time in any election in my lifetime. It truly is. And that’s what I want to speak to you about.”
To be clear, Donald Trump did not apologize. He attributed his obscene, lewd, sexist, sexual assaulting behavior to locker room banter. I am sure most locker rooms do not condone speech promoting sexual assaults against women. Andy Crouch, executive editor of Christianity Today, wrote a piece titled “Speak Truth to Trump: Evangelicals, of all people, should not be silent about Donald Trump’s blatant immorality” that all evangelicals and others should heed.
Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.
And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.
Last week I wrote a piece titled “Evangelical contortions to support Donald Trump a travesty to Christianity” where I said the following.
Many religious leaders are causing the destruction of religion itself. Why? Many merged politics, religion, and capitalism as the definition of Christianity itself. It is true that Pope Francis is attempting to re-inject a loss morality, but he is only one man. He may be too late to get to the American Evangelicals.
Evangelicals contort themselves into knots to find justifications to vote for Donald Trump, a man one of their own, Steve Deace described as anathema to all their values in a piece he wrote warning Christian Leaders about the hypocrisy of voting for Donald Trump.
After the 2016 elections, one hopes that the farce that is the evangelical movement will be exposed for what it is. This movement is nothing more than one that exploits the faith and ignorance of its followers for the monetary gain of a corrupt few.
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