Jesus and Voting for Donald Trump

Everyday my newsfeed seems full of Donald Trump. Now because he is officially the Republican nominee for president of the United States. This alone is unbelievable and horrifying, but far more harrowing is the resurgence of Facebook posts and blogs from people asserting that God told them to support Donald Trump.

Now I'm pretty sure if Jesus was here on earth he wouldn't be engaging too much in politics. I am quite confident if Jesus was here today he would be spending time with those in poverty, seeing the people often unseen by society, acknowledging and validating people's humanity, and engaging in the lives and stories of those marginalized for their skin color, sexuality, or religion.

I'm not sure if Jesus would vote or not, so I'm not going to be one to say who he would vote for. But I'm very sure that if Jesus were to vote, he would not vote for Donald Trump. 

You can tell me that I don't know that, because I'm not God. And this would be true. I cannot speak for God. But I can talk about the Jesus I know, and I can assure you the things that Donald Trump says and does are vastly out-of-line with the way of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus spent his time with those hated most by society. He spent time with the hungry and sick. He spoke to women, which was already radical because he actually stopped to acknowledge their equal humanity, but he went even farther and spoke to the women no one associated with. He touched people who were sick and dying, often making himself "unclean" according to the religious tradition of the day just to with with someone cast out by society. He entered the homes of the "sinner," and spent so much time with those on the margins that the people in power whispered about him behind closed doors. 

Jesus spoke with such radical love and inclusivity that it threatened hierarchical power structures and got him killed. Donald Trump sits at the top of a pyramid of power, using his power to further marginalize, using fear to control people, and spreading hatred and lies. 

Jesus went to those cast out and built relationships with them, the very ones Donald Trump promises to keep and kick out of this "great country." 

In fact, in line with Donald Trump's racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, lack of compassion for the poor, and so much more, Jesus probably wouldn't even be allowed to enter the United States. 

But if he made it in, I think Jesus would spend time with Donald Trump. Not out of support, because nothing about the way of Jesus in line with what Donald Trump stands for, but because Jesus acknowledged the humanity of everyone. Jesus ate dinner with the oppressed and the oppressor. He ate dinner with the tax collectors too, the ones taking advantage of the system and using it to further themselves while stealing from those already too poor to pay taxes to the government, much less the additional "fees" added on by the tax collectors that went into their own pockets. Jesus spent time with them too. And his love for them, willingness to engage with their humanity also, changed the hearts of the tax collectors (like Matthew) who followed him. I do not believe Jesus would ever vote for Donald Trump, but I think he'd at least try to have dinner with him. 

Whether Trump would ever accept the invitation to dinner with a Middle Eastern poor man is another question entirely. 

Anything Helps

I drove by a shopping cart as I turned onto my street, full of someone’s worldly goods, brown cardboard sign poking out from the top. It was haloed in light from the street-light above. I didn’t see anyone nearby.

Last night I passed the same shopping cart piled high as I got off the highway. It was just a few hundred yards away from where it sat tonight. 

Someone “lives” in this area, parking all their belongings as they try to catch a few moments of rest. Likely struggling to truly sleep, racked with anxiety their cart will have been taken away come morning. I wonder, as the owner flew their sign earlier today, did they make enough money to find a cheap place to stay? Some shitty motel with a low rate, anywhere slightly cleaner and more comfortable than the hard concrete. 

I simply cannot fathom keeping everything I own in a shopping cart. Honestly, I can’t fathom owning so little it all fits into a shopping cart. 

I can’t imagine what it is like to have to fly a sign all day, standing at the corner of the exit off I-25, not only wanting to make some money, but also longing for someone to look my way and acknowledge my presence, my humanity. Standing there as people are waiting at the red light. Awkwardly fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, praying the light turns green so they don’t have to sit here and pretend I’m not there because they don’t have any cash, or they don’t want to give it, or they think I’m a lazy bum, or they just feel guilty that they have while I have not. 

I can’t imagine what that’s like. 

Yesterday I was driving back from my shift at Network, a coffee shop centered around providing a safe, humanizing space for Denver’s homeless. A place to just be present, enjoy friendships, drink too much coffee. I’d just spent hours practicing presence with the homeless, and as I drove down Grant and turned a corner, I realized there was a homeless man standing on the corner with his sign who I had barely seen until I’d already passed by. 

I spend my weeks engaging with the poor and building friendships with the homeless and I still barely saw him. 

We’re so conditioned in our society to ignore what makes us uncomfortable, to pretend that which is not right simply does not exist (for to acknowledge it would mean having to address it). It’s far easier to dehumanize the “other,” because if I have compassion and begin to actually see another human being, I can no longer excuse their suffering. 

There is so much injustice in this broken, hurting world. When these injustices are happening to a far-off group of “others” who I have no personal connection with, I can speak in lofty terms, pass judgments, and create grandiose hypothetical solutions for the human beings I’ve never met. But when someone goes from a nameless, faceless being to a person I know by name, the hypothetical solutions and lofty conversations are now about my friend. 

We must begin to see the Imago Dei in each and every human being we encounter - whether we love them or not. There are people in this world who I would rather hate. I want them to just be evil, because that would be simpler. Bad people are bad, therefore I do not have to love them. This releases me from humanizing my enemy. But the truth of God is that every single human being in this world is a Child of God, made in God’s Good Image. Even if they are deeply broken and twisted at this time, the core of humanity is still a Good Creation. And when we acknowledge this, that we are all Beloved Children, then I can no longer demonize the other or the perceived enemy. I can no longer hold those I deem bad at arm’s length, because we have the same core identity.

When I see the shopping cart glowing in the late-night street lights, and I pause to think about the Child of God who pushes it around, holding a cardboard sign reading, “Anything Helps,” I must begin to also see myself. 

I too am a beggar. While my physical needs are met and I have been afforded much in my life, my beggar is within. What would my sign say if I stood there on the street corner? My shopping cart full of my insecurities and bad relationships, piled high with poor decisions and all the ways I try to earn love, affection, and worth, all covered up in a blanket of doing good things for the wrong reasons because I’m afraid I won’t be loved if I don’t. My sign begging for love, pleading to be wanted, asking for security and success. “Help, I’m addicted to affirmation. Won’t believe I’m enough on my own. Can’t seem to get clean.”

We are all human beings created in the Image of God. We’re all beggars in some right, suffering from loneliness and racked with addictions trying to fill the void. The question is if we will choose the humility to see it. 

That shopping cart could so easily be mine, on the corner of lonely and hopeless under a street light in the foggy night. 

I'm Still a Christian

“You still call yourself a Christian?”

I’d spent the past hour discussing theology, faith, the poor, racism, Ferguson, injustice, the church, and who knows what else, with a fellow follower-of-Jesus-Christ. 

This question wasn’t formed as an accusatory response to something, but an almost confused, slightly surprised, inquiry.

I wasn’t being asked if I was still a Christian because something I had done, said, or believed seemed to contradict the teachings of Jesus. Rather I was being asked if I still chose to identify myself with Christianity, to label myself as a Christian.

This question surprised me. Until that moment I hadn’t really strongly considered not calling myself a Christian, and so until that moment had not really formed a reason for why I still do.

“Christian” today is a loaded term. People more often think of churches with crosses and steeples, rules and street preachers, judgement and passive people, pamphlets and tracts handed out on street corners, and a prayer that supposedly solves all the world’s problems.

Christianity as a religious institution has, like so many other religions, done great harm as well as great good. It has, again like so many other religions, taken teachings and used them to justify incredible evil (the Crusades, slavery, oppression of women, just to name a few).

The term “Christian,” when it was originally used, literally meant follower-of-Christ. It meant living a life that mirrored that of Christ, in such a radical way that the government continually sought to take the Christians out because their radical love and kindness was seen as a threat.

Now that's the kind of Christian I can identify as!

But Christianity, Christians, and the church today are characterized by apathy and passivity. Collecting dust on church pews while the world outside is in desperate need of the unconditional love they claim to possess. If you have received beautiful, priceless, unconditional love and grace...shouldn’t you share it?

Yet somehow, Christianity has become more about “saving souls from fire and damnation,” a religion colored with brimstone and a red horned devil, instead of caring for the oppressed and marginalized, caring for the poor, whether their poverty be physical or spiritual. Somehow Christianity, once marked with compassion and radical love, has become stained with hypocrisy and judgement.

At the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus gives His followers a command, now termed the “Great Commission,” telling them to go into the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them all Jesus had taught them.

This command was not about getting people to pray some certain prayer* so their lives would magically become wonderful and they could have 100% assurance they’d go to heaven when they died regardless of how the rest of their life looked simply because they had prayed a prayer.

The Great Commission is about living out the teachings of Jesus, which in turn makes disciples, changes our world, and brings about the Kingdom.

It is not about following enough rules to be perfect, not doing x, y, or z your whole life to be the “best Christian” out there. Jesus didn’t talk about following moral codes, but He did talk about loving God first, loving ones neighbor as one loves oneself, and caring for the poor and oppressed.

In Matthew 23, Jesus calls out the pharisees and teachers of the law.

“You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”

How sad that when I read those verses I immediately think of the church today? Their hearts were far from God because they were so obsessed with rules that were no longer about honoring God but had instead become about making themselves look good. Whitewashed tombs, as Jesus calls the pharisees a few chapters later. Christianity today is a whitewashed tomb, “beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean, appearing to people as righteous but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Jesus continues, “You have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

Let’s break this down even more, to see what true Christianity is all about.

Micah 6:8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans in their distress.”

Psalm 82:3-4, “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless, maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Christianity is about following Christ. Following Christ is about living as He did. It is about loving Him, and loving others, and defending the poor and oppressed, the marginalized, the widow, the orphan.

Living a life like Christ means living in a way that invites others to participate. It is more about actions than words. It isn’t about beating people with Bibles until they fall on their knees to regurgitate a prayer, it is about hanging out with the homeless over a cup of coffee.

It’s about sitting down to hear someone’s story even if you have different beliefs and really just listening, not trying to hijack the conversation, twist it to your agenda, so you can get to the part where you get to talk about what you believe and why they should too.

How sad is it, that Christian’s actually acting like Christ (remember Ghandi’s quote?), would be so confusing and surprising?

Let’s remember the pharisees had a beef with Jesus for hanging out with “sinners,” tax collectors, and prostitutes.

Now if that’s who Jesus hung with, without judgement and forcing them to change who they were before they knew Him, then that’s who I spend time with. It’s not my job to change someone, to save them from hell, to convince them to live one way or another. As a follower-of-Christ my job is to love and serve, as Christ did. That’s a faith that walks. My faith** walks, my faith doesn’t sit in a church-building trying to be perfect.

And so when you ask me if I still call myself a Christian, I have decided my answer is yes. Not because I align myself with the religion of Christianity, but because I align myself and define myself as a follower of Jesus Christ. And I will continue to call myself a Christian because I know my faith walks, and maybe meeting more Christians who are followers-of-Christ instead of worshipers-of-rules will change what “Christian” means. Maybe calling myself a Christian and then actually acting like a real, Christ-following one can change a few people’s minds about that Jesus guy. Maybe they’ll even follow Him too.




*Note that the infamous “Sinner’s Prayer” is not actually in the Bible.

**My faith is not about a God who loves people based on their skin color, sexuality, or gender. My faith is about a God who died for all people, so all people could be be free.