Donald Trump and the Pharisees Four Years Later
I think the Good Lord gave me some small ability to heap insult and ridicule on dumb people and evil ideas, but I haven’t used my gift as well as I should. It’s been bothering me, because I truly believe God allowed Donald Trump to teach me something very powerful about the “weightier matters of the law,” and I may not have made the point as clearly as I should have — by letting a few of you “Christians” know how profoundly lost you just might be.
I love you, so listen..
Simply put, when Christ roasted the Pharisees alive, by calling them children of the devil, He illustrated a timeless reality we see in people like John Piper and Max Lucado. The spirit of “politeness over truth” is still with us today. It is disgusting and falsely holy and it should be profoundly disturbing — something like attending a viewing four months after the death, and looking down to see a rotting corpse in a Brooks Brothers suit. It’s not pretty, no matter how much you dress it up.
Dialogue might help. Imagine a church leadership meeting..
| Jeff | So, for our new elder, I’m proposing Zach– |
| Max | Zachary Blunt? How could you even think that? |
| Jeff | What’s wrong? |
| Max | He’s rude! He called Darla Thomas a BIMBO! |
| Jeff | Max, listen. First of all, I love Darla. But, really, she is a bimbo. She’s destroyed three men in our congregation. We need to pray for her, but Zack was just telling the truth there. |
| Max | I infinitely prefer Joe Bidwell. He’s polite, friendly, totally measured in his conversation. |
| Jeff | But he kills children for a living. He owns five abortion clinics. |
| Max | We are all sinners, Jeff. Joe is the kindest man in this congregation. He gave all the mothers flowers on Mother’s Day. |
| Jeff | That was marketing. He’s marketing baby killing. Praising moms and letting them know they have an option to kill their children. |
| Max | But Zachary Blunt insults people! |
If you don’t get point of this amplified illustration, you might not ever — and that should scare you, right down to the marrow of your bones. If you resent Donald Trump for being bombastic but you don’t worry about Joe Biden lying through his teeth and being proud of abortion rights, something is terribly diseased down there in the basement of your soul. You need to come to Jesus. You need to admit — for all your friends and family to see — that you are a superficial German Lutheran who would ignore the Holocaust if its workers were well mannered, shoe-polished, sweet-talking church-goers. As Douglas Wilson recently explained, John Piper is missing the point. ALL sin, without Jesus, keeps us from God, but not all sin has the same temporal or spiritual consequences. Picking up someone else’s penny isn’t the same as raping a woman.
THINK, Christian, and pray. Do you really believe you can justify voting for a man, and a party, anxiously engaged in killing as many babies as possible? Our opponents in this tend to call us “one issue voters,” but is there any issue other than life? Hasn’t the Holy Spirit made this easy for you? Stop LYING to yourselves.
Four years ago, I had this to say about Donald Trump and his detractors. I am overjoyed to know that millions of Christians have changed their mind about Donald Trump, including people like Erik Erickson (who ridiculed me) and Al Mohler. Even young guys like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh seem to have come around.
Get on board. Take a torch to your inner Pharisee. I had to.
America is your vineyard. Tend it.
