Forgiveness (And Christianity, While We’re At It) Should Actually Mean Something
The amount of self-identified Jesus-followers who have stepped up to strenuously defend Donald Trump over his most recent offensive comments (ICYMI, he’s had a few since he began his campaign over a year ago) is simultaneously mind-blowing and pathetic.
This pitiful defense is often bolstered by a combination of biblical and theological statements — none of which holds any water whatsoever.
[Forgive him]
Christians have been calling on people to simply forgive Donald Trump for his sickening behavior and comments caught on tape. Many of these same Christians refused even going through the motions of forgiveness when it came to previous (Democratic) presidents, from Bill Clinton to Jimmy Carter.
Carter, who was an evangelical Southern Baptist, still committed two unpardonable sins — being a Democrat, and not falling in line with the newly-established Religious Right’s insistence that the totality of Christianity be exclusively relegated to specific views on abortion and gay marriage.
There’s also a component of the act of forgiveness (in the Christian tradition) known as repentance: literally, a “turning around,” an amendment of character and action.
To bestow forgiveness without recognizing the importance of repentance is an aspect of what Lutheran theologian (and failed-Hitler-assassinator) Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace.
Donald Trump has never even pretended to repent of any of the vile language or actions flowing from his narcissistic core — on Sunday night (one example of many), he turned a voter question about Islamophobia into a tirade on the essential suspicion that, in his view, make up the identity of every single Muslim in the world.
Trump has shown us time and again that he lacks even a cursory ability to express remorse or show repentance — the recently-released tape illustrated the only instance in which I have ever encountered any such “regret” from him:
I failed. I admit it. I tried to fuck her, she was married.
[Casting stones]
Another favorite tactic (including from Trump surrogate and seemingly unhinged former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani) has been to wax poetic on a specific biblical phrase: let the one without sin cast the first stone. As usual when it comes to the Holy Bible, it’s helpful to actually go to the source and bring in some context.
These words come from Jesus as told by the enigmatic Gospel of John (7:53–8:11), and it happens when he comes across a group of men sexually shaming a prostitute. [Fun fact: the story in question interestingly isn’t included in the oldest Greek manuscripts we have of John.]
They were leaders screaming and preparing to assault a woman for an offense that had no witnesses (not to mention the man in question, who had disappeared), and yet Jesus, calmly doodling in the sand, quietly stands up and drops the mic, refusing to allow the self-assured authorities off the hook.
The audacity of (mainly) men — ones who routinely bow to the idol of Trump — to place this phrase spoken by Jesus into their own mouths as a way to defend a serial con-artist is simply beyond the pale.
[God uses imperfect people]
This is making its rounds, especially from conservative Christian commentators — again, by people who would have never have imagined using the same biblical truth to defend an imperfect man like Bill Clinton.
Of course, Trump is no hero. And those “few words” speak of (and brag about) sexual assault and rape. [God is also not a super-masculine HE, but I digress.]
