Reminiscent of the 1980 remarks of Ronald Reagan to a group of evangelical pastors and leaders gathered at Reunion Arena in Dallas, Donald Trump has formed an evangelical “advisory board” which, according to his website, “represents Donald J. Trump’s endorsement of those diverse issues important to Evangelicals and other Christians, and his desire to have access to the wise counsel of such leaders as needed.” None of these leaders were required to endorse his candidacy although several of them unmistakably have already done that. The list of these leaders is as follows:
Contemporary Church Issues
How Can This Many People Be Wrong?
The now infamous Jerry Falwell Jr. picture with DT.
Every parent has heard (and I suspect many of them said as a child), “Hey Dad (or Mom), everyone is doing this and if everyone is doing this, how can it be wrong?”
And the classic response from the parent has been, “If everyone was jumping off a cliff would you do that too?”
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Responses to Criticisms of the “No Lesser of Two Evil Movement”
If you have followed social media then you have likely ran across a growing number of Christians who have decided that voting for the lessor of two evils is no longer a viable strategy for national reformation. This blog is not intended to articulate the philosophy of the movement except to say that the foundation is formed in a couple of simple points: (These are not exhaustive)
1. Whatever you do (that includes voting) you do to the glory of God. (I Cor. 10:31, Col. 3:17)
2. There is a biblical qualifying standard and process for civic leaders to embrace. (Ex. 18:13-24; Romans 13:1-6; I Timothy 3, Titus 1)
3. We are to agree not only with the GOALS of reformation, but obey the Scriptural pattern and process for electing those leaders stewarding our nation.
4. Empowering unrighteousness will never produce a righteous outcome.
Sloppy Sovereignty
The GOP primary has revealed so many dynamics that psychologists, sociologists, and theologians will have plenty of fodder to complete a host of new Ph.D. dissertations in the near future. While I do not claim to be any of the above, I have been particularly interested in the theological acrobatics Christians have engaged in justifying a Trump candidacy and vote. Any one of a hundred reasons as to why Donald is God’s choice could warrant a college term paper in response, but I only want to briefly explore one that I have called, “Sloppy Sovereignty”.
A Counterfeit Peace
“You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.”
Hebrews 12:4 NKJV
I was watching the famous CBS news show, 60 Minutes, as they reported on a young woman who recently transitioned her gender to a male. It was a 20 minute segment which I shall be the first to stipulate makes a subject like this one hard to grapple with appropriately or adequately. Perhaps the first critique of such an attempt is the simple notion of fairness in exploring what exactly is going on inside a person born one gender but feels they are another gender. My instincts tell me that CBS had no intention of being “fair” but rather paint a sympathetic portrait of a transgendered person which will make assimilating their desires into main stream culture a natural and ordinary thing. There was no professional analysis or exploration into this area. It was simply an endearing story which was meant to frame any question into the legitimacy of such a transition as bigoted and narrow-minded.