Standing in front of the chief conduit of collective darkness and chaos in the world today, televangelist Paula White-Cain, Donald Trump’s “spiritual advisor” (a doubly laughable oxymoron), likened the odious POTUS to Jesus. It’s proof of how far wrong Christianity has gone in America.
Then again, to a contemplative it’s no surprise that Christianity is ending so wrong, since it began wrong.
The veneration of power and money that characterizes Christian nationalism, while cultishly following the devil’s own president, is the nadir of religiosity in America.
As the commentator Michelle Goldberg recently said, “This is a country in moral and ethical free fall.” As regular readers of “Meditations” know, I’ve been saying that for many years, in a futile attempt to put a floor under the free fall that began long before the Trump manifestation in 2016.
The hatemonger that makes Pilate look like a decent fellow bellowed at the start of his and Netanyahu’s war: “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags. They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
As Christians used to say, “What would Jesus say?”
Trump just submitted a formal budget to Congress for the American military of an astronomical 1.5 trillion dollars for next year. That’s an increase of over a third. On the same day this agent of chaos ridiculed child-care and health care as “scams” for which the federal government should have no responsibility.
As one pundit put it, Trump and Hegseth believe “the US armed forces are a dangerous dog that deserves to roam free across the globe, pursuing its own savage instincts wherever it turns.”
In a sense they’re right, since to have a military of such size and “lethality” is not only obscene, but is there to be used, as it has many times around the world.
And liberals, rather than take a stand against US militarism, genuflect before the altar of America’s military and chant, “Thank you for your service” with the same habitual devotion of a Muslim uttering, “Peace be upon him” after every mention of Muhammad.
The king of malice’s latest post — his Easter message to the world — is enough to make any person of faith in Intelligence and Humanity vomit: “Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will rain down on them. Glory be to GOD!”
Behind the blatant evil of this war and the egregiously misplaced wealth of the wealthiest country in the world is a culture of dumbed down and numbed out consumers, whose general attitude is, “I don’t care about anything but my immediate self and my immediate surroundings.” Politically, that translates into being “avowed localists.”
At the spiritual level, the commentariat bleats idealistic bullshit such as, “All faith leaders, not just Christians, could and should act together.” That completely ignores the fact that religions have historically been the source of the deepest divisions and bloodiest wars.
So what are the precepts that Christianity got wrong from the beginning?
There are the obvious ones, like Jesus’ virgin birth and physical resurrection from the dead. And if one doesn’t believe Jesus rose from the dead and walked around for another 40 days and 40 nights before physically ascending into heaven, one isn’t a Christian.
Then there is the idea that Jesus was the Son of God, when he humbly said he was the “son of man.” His deification gave rise to the theological fabrication that he was sent and meant to suffer and die for all mankind to wash away our sins.
The truth, Jesus wasn’t meant to die on the cross; his mission failed, though he didn’t fail.
Even as a boy the story of how Jesus so agonized all night alone in Gethsemane over his imminent arrest while his disciples slept that he sweated blood, gave me pause. What really happened there?
In my teens I learned that under extreme stress, the capillaries in the forehead can break and mix with sweat, so that it appears the person is sweating blood. It’s called hematidrosis.
So if Jesus knew all along he was meant to die on the cross, as the Bible says, why this sign of extreme agony and stress? After all, he later stood before Pilate with great equanimity, having accepted his fate, and said nothing in response to the accusations from the chief Jewish priests, which greatly surprised Pilate.
The Jesus of Pete Hegseth (Trump has no beliefs except in his own self-glorification) is actually, in his reverence for power, wealth and murder, a veneration of the antithesis of Jesus. In short, they work for the devil and call him Jesus.
The Jesus I was raised with during ten years of Catholic parochial school became an empty fiction by the time I was 17. But after nearly dying in my 30’s from food poisoning, a Japanese woman walked up through a crowd on my first day outdoors and made a direct reference to my illness. Then she said that “the Buddha spirit flows through me.”
Seeing my skepticism, she declared, “I’m not crazy.” Then she began to speak about Jesus in a way that I had never heard before. The essence of the historical Jesus as she tenderly talked about him was forgiveness.
That rang true, and something opened in my heart. I recalled how when Peter asked if should forgive someone up to seven times, Jesus replied, “I say not until seven times, but until seventy times seven.”
Having had a fight with my mother when I last saw her, and having been deathly ill for a fortnight, I’d forgotten that it was her birthday. She cried when I called, and my response to that metaphysical incident helped me move through my grief when she died.
Contrary to the pornography of violence depicted in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” Jesus’ physical pain during his torture and crucifixion was secondary, since the body didn’t matter to him anymore. His passion was for humanity, and after his cri de coeur on the cross — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — he said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Trump and Hegseth are hellbent on matching the evil of Iran’s theocracy. Do they know what they’re doing? And can the perpetrators of mass murder on both sides be forgiven?
I don’t know, but they and their kind on all sides must be stopped. Though this world war will run its course, and the opportunity for humankind to change course will come when it finally ends.
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