Stop Expecting Grapes from Thorns
“I’m a Christian and I’m sad and confused and angry that even one Christian, much less the overwhelming majority, voted for Trump. So now what?” — Summary of dozens of comments I’ve received.
So, how could anyone who claims to love Jesus support a man like Trump? It’s a valid question and one worth considering for all people of all faiths and religions. I do not pretend to know “the” answer to this question. So instead I wrote a parable that might provide just the smallest bit of insight if you will indulge me. And then, if you make it through that, I will offer a bit of the advice I’ve been trying to give myself despite the fact that myself seems pretty set on just being pissed off and/or sad. Maybe we can do better than just upset. We should all be upset, and then we should try to be more.
A man once became obsessed with creating the perfect video game, or at least perfect for him. He loved stories of knights and castles and so he wrote the code for a game where a knight would go on a quest to save his village from all that threatened it. The game included smaller subquests to gather tools and weapons and magic potions and maps and such. Once you completed all the subquests eventually you would face a dragon. The dragon could then be defeated by using what you had gathered along the way.
The man died before he could create the game himself but he had written all the code and left his notes for how to play the game. The notes were sometimes scribbles, sometimes poems about the game, sometimes stories and sometimes instructions that seemed specific but were difficult to understand outside of whatever was in the man’s mind when he wrote them. The Dad seemed to understand this about his cryptic notes and so he said in all caps right at the top: “The most important thing here is to save the villagers. That’s all that really matters about this game. It’s not the dragon, it’s not the quests, just save the villagers.” Then throughout the notes, the Dad would insert little notes like, “remember however you play the game the only thing that really matters is to save the villagers.”
The man had 4 children and three of them were old enough to be able to take the code and the instructions and make their Dad’s dream game a reality. The code created the game just as their Dad had described. It seemed clear to all of them that the point of the game was to slay the dragon. After all, the dragon was a threat to the village and so that was the critical part of the game. Then they set about reading and studying their Dad’s notes convinced that the way to slay the dragon was contained in those notes. Eventually, each of the three older children became certain they had discovered the exact order and pattern needed to play the game so that you could defeat the dragon in the end. Each of them relied on their pattern and never strayed from it as they believed their Dad’s notes and intent were clear. So they sat down and began playing the game following their version of their Dad’s instructions to the letter. Each time, they would complete the smaller quests and face the dragon. Each time they would follow their pattern, but each time the dragon would engulf them and the village in its fiery breath and they would lose the game.
The 3 older children met while their younger sibling played nearby to discuss how to address the problem with the game. One child said, “Dad’s instructions must be right so we need only to keep following them and it will work out. Perhaps we were meant to lose the game. Perhaps we will win it later. Either way, the important part of Dad’s legacy are the code and the instructions. We must leave them unaltered and if that means we lose every game, so be it.”
One of the other children said, “I hate losing, but I agree the code and instructions must be held sacred and I cannot think of any other way to reach the desired outcome. Perhaps if we played on a different computer or in a different room or in a different time of day, we could finally slay the dragon.” That child tried those things but was never able to defeat the dragon.
The third older child said, “There is nothing that needs to be fixed. I hate seeing the dragon win, but the real point is the journey and if the knight gets killed, they probably deserved it, and Dad loved campfires so he probably meant for the dragon to win and the fact that he kept telling us over and over that the whole point of the game was that the villagers be saved, was just his weird Gen X way of talking and doesn’t really apply to us. We should just keep playing like we have been and someday, if it is really what Dad wanted, we will slay that dragon.”
Finally, the younger child stopped their playing and offered this. “Perhaps (she was the type of young child who started sentences with words like “perhaps”), if we focus on saving the village maybe the knight doesn’t even have to slay the dragon. Maybe the dragon is not an enemy? Maybe the knight and the dragon could work together to protect the village. So maybe we should try something different. Maybe the code works differently on today’s computers than it did on Dad’s. Maybe there was something about the instructions that we didn’t understand and we should try a new approach to the game. Otherwise, if we keep doing the same thing in the same way, won’t we mostly get the same result?”
The older children laughed at her and were deeply offended on behalf of their father. They questioned whether the younger child even ever loved their father, explained that she was too young to understand, reiterated that the code and instructions were more important than the game itself or the outcome and mocked and shunned their sister until she left.
Once on her own she decided to play the game herself. She started by gathering her friends together that had never heard of the game. She listened to their ideas and shared some of her own. Then she loaded the code on a different computer and played the game focused on the village rather than the dragon. Then the young girl and her friends followed the quests in a sequence that was fun and made the most sense to each of them. When they faced the dragon they tried various patterns and discovered that no one pattern defeated the dragon. Instead, a variety of patterns worked and some would work sometimes and not others and many times they were able to save the village without defeating the dragon at all. It was almost as if her father had gone out of his way to not establish one specific way to win the game.
Delighted by her discovery, she came back to her siblings and found them playing the game the same way they always had but now they were angry at each other over their differences and too angry at her to listen to what she had learned. All of her siblings remained convinced that they would be the one to win the game, though none of them ever did.
I have spent my whole life as a follower of Jesus. For nearly all of that time, that meant going to Church and focusing on the religion that Jesus’ followers created shortly after his death. As I got older I learned that there was not really one Christian religion but many and most of them were convinced they alone were following what they believed to be God’s instructions for how to live a life pleasing to God and honoring of Jesus.
That whole time I was told that the Church existed to help people become more like Jesus. And for that same length of time I observed and experienced that to be false. Instead I noticed that in general, Christians were less like Jesus than those who didn’t know anything about him. They were more judgmental, more harsh, less forgiving, less loving, less generous, less empathetic, less humble. Less like Jesus.
And over the years other Christians have had the same observation, but have mostly failed to address the reality that their religion was not producing the desired result. It was producing and still produces pedofile priests, war, poverty, horrible abuses of power, all manner of violence, slavery, hatred, bigotry, self-righteousness and social and governmental systems that are devoid of heart and share no values in common with the first century Jewish rabbi to whom they claimed fidelity.
So, why should it be a surprise to anyone paying attention that it also produced a man who embodies all of those poisonous fruits? To be clear, Christianity did not make Trump an evil man, but it did allow him to take power. It did and does support him in his quest for more power. It does turn a blind eye to his rape, his treason, his hate speeech, his bigotry, his greed, his arrogance, his lack of empathy. That is, when it is not outright praising him for those things.
How? Why?
Well, I think part of the answer goes back to something Jesus said. In Jesus’ most famous sermon as recorded in the writings associated with his apostle Matthew, he offered this bit of wisdom:
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
I have heard this passage used to describe Trump and it fits well enough. But I think there is a harder lesson here for those of us who have been calling ourselves Christians. What if the ferocious wolves and thornbushes are us? What if we have become the false prophets and the bad trees? Is there really any question any more whether that is true?
If you want to consider whether the Church is meeting the mission of Jesus, maybe it is time to stop focusing on our process and ask whether we are getting the desired results. I am rather convinced that a religion that produces people ready to support someone like Trump (to say nothing of all the other ways Christians treat each other and our world generally), is a bad tree that needs to be cut down and thrown into the fire.
Church is broken. Christianity is broken. How many more times does the dragon need to engulf us in fire for us to accept that basic, obvious truth?
There is a real debate to be had about whether Jesus ever had in mind to start a religion. Note that he says essentially nothing about whether there should be one or how it might work. His followers immediately created a religion around his teachings and just as immediately gave preference to their own ideas about how Jesus’s teachings fit within their existing religious ideas over the one thing he said was the most important: love one another.
So, I’m not sure the Church and the Christian religion has ever been a net positive for humanity. And I say that while very convinced that the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings remains exactly what humanity needs.
From Jesus we learn love, mercy, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, generosity, caring and friendship.
From Christianity we learn guilt, shame, judgment, rules, division, hatred, magical thinking that undermines knowledge, power and personal ambition.
Despite those flaws, the power of Jesus has led many Christians and Christian organizations to do many wonderful things in the world. I have benefited immensely from the kindness and love shown to me and my family because of Church. But it is not enough. Especially when weighed against the harm it has done which I have only begun to mention a fraction of here.
If you are mad that Christians voted for Trump, good. Be mad. Stay mad. Use that fire to motivate you to demand something different from yourself and from those who call Jesus lord.
And here is the hard advice I have given myself. Leave church and let it die. Do not leave Jesus. Do not leave your communities. Do not leave your friends and family. But if you gather in the name of God, make sure that the gathering does not become your God. If you must stay in Church or have found a church that does not fit my description of harm, then at very least think critically about whether you and the Church are producing good fruit. If it is not, do not be afraid to tear it down and build something that does or might or could.
This is not the time for small tweaks and minor changes. This is not the time to just lean in and try harder at what we have been doing. This is a time to be bold and ask hard questions and take big actions.
The country is in the hands of those who hate Jesus’ values and it was taken over by those who claim to be his followers. This is a crisis that cannot stand.
I don’t know what that should look like. But here is a possible start.
Listen. Listen to your neighbor in financial crisis. Listen to your neighbor in fear of deportation. Listen to your fire breathing uncle who believes Trump is our salvation and the Democrats are eating babies in the basements of pizza parlors. When people feel they have no voice, they will become hateful and violent. Not every voice needs to make policy, but every person deserves to be heard. That requires us to do crazy things like love our enemies and have meals with people who we think are wrong. It requires us to stop what we are doing and inquire with those who have been othered and mocked and shamed on both sides of the political spectrum. Not because all ideas have merit but because all people do. And we will never break the terrible cycle we are in by doing the same things that put us here. We have to get out of our pews and cathedrals and find humanity.
We have to love until people feel loved, not until we feel like we are being loving.
Do not be afraid to stop waiting for a thornbush to create a grape. Try a different seed. And another and another until we all have grapes instead of just the blood that comes from trying to pick grapes from thorns.
