Conservative Christians Are Saying, ‘To Hell With Jesus’

What makes someone a Christian?

I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately.

I feel like I should know the answer.

I was a pastor in the local church for over two decades.

I attended seminary, read, studied, and taught the Bible; delivered hundreds of sermons, and led more retreats and conferences than I can recall.

And despite that wealth of experience as a member of the clergy, I’m still not sure how you can tell if someone who claims to be a Christian actually is a Christian (by that, I mean, if they have any real interest in the teachings of Jesus). The story goes that seeing into another person’s heart is difficult.

However, I’m willing to go out on a theological limb here and say that if you’re applauding the harassment, fining, and arrest of homeless human beings, you’re not a Jesus Christian.

I mean, you can go to church as often as you want, you can stick as many WWJD bumper stickers on your car as you’d like, and you can drop all the scripture quotes into your social media profile that your heart desires—but if you’re celebrating the elimination of reduced lunches, food stamp programs, and low-income housing, well, let’s just say your religion is short one Jesus.

As someone who’s spent decades around Conservative Christians, I’ve heard the same tired, pathetic justification for wanting to discard Government-subsidized care programs: that the Church, not the Government, should care for people.

Sounds virtuous enough, until you realize that they (the very people who voted in the politicians currently dismantling healthcare, defunding public schools, and eliminating meal programs) are the same people filling many of the country’s churches (which apparently were already supposed to be doing this caring for the poor, and are not).

Right now, I don’t see these alleged followers of Jesus rushing en masse to come to the aid of the poor and the homeless, to immigrants and refugees, and to those living in food insecurity (but that’s exactly where Jesus was and where they’re supposed to be). Instead, they’re allowing Fox News anchors, Evangelical preachers, and Republican politicians to fill them with contempt for the hungry, the poor, the foreigner, the homeless—and to feel righteous, to boot.

As the Evangelical-fueled Trump Administration is breaking up tent cities, burning encampments, and shutting down healthcare services, we’re not witnessing an overwhelming outpouring of compassion from Conservative church folk who have declared that they’re going to build the homes and make the lunches and pay for the surgeries and watch the children for the millions being kicked to the curb by this Conservative leadership—and we shouldn’t be holding our breath.

The truth is, if these same people who call the Evangelical Church home had been following Jesus’ example all along, we wouldn’t be having these conversations at all. If these professed men and women of God were truly burdened to love their brothers and sisters as they would Jesus, this would be a non-issue.

But we do have this epidemic of poverty and pain and hunger, and the disheartening truth is that these Christians are the very people always loudly telling the least to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” neglecting the fact that they have no boots to begin with.

The sad truth is, Conservative Christians don’t want their Government or the Church to lift people who are in need. They’d prefer to live with the fictional narrative that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, that those suffering with mental illness or massive debt are doing so because of some moral failing or bad decision. This story allows them to keep the stuff they have, to ignore the call to love their neighbor as themselves, and to feel morally superior in the process.

Jesus says that whatever we do to the poor and the hurting and the hungry, we do to him. That should be a terrifying proposition to Republicans who claim the Christian faith or call the American Conservative Church home. GOP leadership and voters in the rank-and-file who co-sign their predatory actions toward those who are the most in need of empathy and mercy in these days are saying with great clarity: “To hell with all of you.”

White Evangelicals like to claim America is a Christian Nation. Now, putting aside the fact that a country can’t actually claim a collective religion, the reality is that a nation filled with these supposed followers of Jesus, where 11 percent of its people live in poverty and tens of millions more hang above it by the thinnest of threads, has no business invoking the name of Jesus, anyway.

I have no interest in seeing America become a Christian nation, but it would be nice to see Conservative Evangelicals in America actually give a damn about Jesus.

No, I don’t know what makes someone a Christian, but I know a fraud when I see one.

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