I have long been avoiding having any political conversations with close relatives. Normally I don’t shy away from controversial or engaging dialogue but the amount of investment one has in familial ties tends to pull heavily. Maybe it’s easier to simply know we stand on opposing sides than reveal the cavernous distance between us. This evening however, those fears were realized when I opened an email from my dad.
The meaning of making one’s blood boil has always eluded me from an experiential understanding until this week. Granted I try to stay level headed and respond thoughtfully throughout the current political chatter, perhaps it’s that awareness that helped me recognize the common sensation, however, today in that moment, as I opened that email as I have read a comment on social media, I sensed the frustration in my entire body. A mix of nausea, fever, and rising blood pressure simultaneously inundated me; I’m reminded to slow down and breathe. The particular email I received did just that. My own father was going to laud his support of the most obtuse bigot and asinine presidential candidate in the history of our nation, and he was going to do it all veiled as “Christian morality” but manifestly in the name of Christ.
The email was a link to an article written by ethics professor and theological scholar, Wayne Grudem. He starts by recognizing the fallibility of the system to which he determines we must either vote for Trump or Clinton, to which I would concur due to the current election process. Grudem also expresses concern that we must continue the conversation despite our differences; admitting my present apprehension with my own family, I would again agree.
From this point on our perspective couldn’t be more disparate. He goes on to assert that Trump is a “good candidate with flaws” claiming that Trump has been “slow to disown and rebuke the wrongful words and actions of some angry fringe supporters” which isn’t true as he has encouraged the antagonism. But this claim pacifies his hate filled rabble rousing and inciting calls to violence as being merely sluggish afterthoughts as Trump is seen pledging to protect the abusive supporters and pay their legal fees.
Trump’s business practice proves he’s a successful jerk at best who has declared bankruptcy four times, swindled people out of money for a faux-university, refused to pay fees for services he contracted out, and the list goes on. Grudem thinks that because Trump has made money, albeit through illegal and morally questionable behavior, he must have consulted credible people as he has a lot of money (granted he hasn’t released any tax returns). This prosperity gospel perpetuates the logic that he will consult the leaders who will help him guide the nation. But still, the professor continues to recognize Trump’s faults stating he lacks nuance. Trump himself says he’s not “politically correct”; yet many would say he’s purely not politically perspicacious as he has no understanding of politics, has laid out zero actual plans, and Trump’s record of reaching across the aisle is as long as his finger. Yet all of these admitted blemishes are “not disqualifying flaws” according to Grudem.
The theologian’s concern throughout the article is that Clinton would nominate liberal judges, which she would, but Trump would bring back religious morality with conservative judges. The Supreme Court will vote on things such as abortion and general religious (Christian) freedom. It seems to Grudem, and many on the conservative white right, that for some clandestine reason a for-profit, tax-paying business should have the right to discriminate against public patrons and additionally, a university should be able to both receive funding from the government and exile public citizens who don’t align with their moral code. While these debates continue on in the courtroom, I have yet to grasp how the Church and State are seemingly tied at the hip. One would think a business that pays taxes is available to the entire public regardless of color or creed. The failure to impress one’s religious morality onto any general public patron is apparently a sign of our present depravity. Of course, Grudem believes that Trump will nullify the perceived moral bankruptcy and usher us into a time of conservative litigation.
But this is all just policy of morality. Where the conservative professor gravely missteps starts when applying a verse from Jeremiah 29:7 to indicate that the people of modern day ought to “seek the welfare” of the political establishment of the United States of America. Whenever we look at Scripture we have to primarily consider it through a lens of Jesus Christ, who had absolutely no interest in political powers or establishments but came to be a servant to all people on earth, even as it led to his murder. The basis of Grudem’s argument is that one ought to vote for Trump because he is beneficial to further mandate religious morality into law, which is exactly what the pharisees did in the Scriptures. They made laws upon laws to ensure they lived within God’s parameters. Ironically this ultimately led to Jesus revealing they were white-washed tombs, full of death on the inside with the hellacious façade of sanctitude. They completely missed the point of the guidelines, which was to point others to know God. These religious leaders of Jesus’s day then condoned him because he shared meals with the whores and thieves, whom he actually invited to be his disciples.
I could talk until I was blue in the face about how this orange faced man is the antithesis of Christ-like values. The morally good choice is the only choice that loves unconditionally as Jesus does. The morally good choice for a president gives everyone equal rights, not just more rights to the right wing. For Christians to expect to regulate the political sphere with their own moral code will only lead to a haughty moral complexity that disconnects the Christian from the one seeking to know the love of Christ.
As Christians we must sit with Christ at the same table alongside those who do not know his grace and love. A Christian in business should not just bake, but donate a cake to a gay wedding, they should go to the Planned Parenthood clinic with their coworker who is pregnant, they should open the bathroom doors of their church for the transgender person who is seeking Christ just as we are. As Jesus demonstrated and Grudem notes, the dialogue in love must continue. This will not happen in Trump’s America. Between Trump and Clinton, only she will stand for the rights of all people, for the equality of each person. Only with Clinton can we continue to improve healthcare rather than squelch it, only with her can we receive equal pay rather than tell a women she is worth less, only with her can we invest in education at home rather than investing military efforts abroad, only with her can we seek to end violence against neighbor rather than incite it.
Regulating morality is not the way Christians are to make an impact. We love because Christ loved us first. It’s because of his kindness that we can come to the table and be with him. Trump will only continue to divide. Conservatives must recognize their culpability in perpetuating this schism as the white-washed right-wing in order to love all equally. It is imperative that we vote for the candidate who already knows public policy, who has a record of standing up for the rights of the marginalized, and grants equality for all who live here, both now and in our future. That’s why I’m with her.
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