Give us Barabbas!

Evangelical pastor perfectly refutes MAGA Christianity! Culture, Faith, and Politics

The odious appeal of Donald Trump

Until just a few minutes ago, I was quite puzzled about how the Evangelical and Pentecostal movements in America and further afield seemed to embrace Donald Trump as the person and symbol to centre Christianity in the political discourse of the nation.

Fundamentally, I saw no principle or example that made Donald Trump likeable or amenable to the idea that this would help the promotion of Christian values. In fact, what I saw was a corruption of the purpose of Jesus Christ for the gain of earthly and political power without helping anyone see the mercy, the grace, the glory, or the power of God in their lives.

Christian nationalism with all its culture war paraphernalia and the accoutrements of wedge issues on women’s, reproductive, identity, or another other kind of right that suggests justice, fairness, respect, and dare I say the love of one’s neighbour, the grist of right-wing political doctrine seemed to replace the gospel and the message that Jesus Christ represented.

The quest for temporal power in determining who sits on the Supreme Court, what is taught in the schools, who has access to critical reproductive health options, and now, whether the net can be widened to give opportunity to those who are not like us had become the unquenchable thirst of religious purpose.

Discernment and discrimination

Even with my more active Anglican adherence, I am quite engaged and involved in the Evangelical and Pentecostal doctrines. A good deal of the underpinning of my faith comes from inspiration borne of charismatic expression and from listening to the anointed teachings of many leaders of that persuasion.

In listening, I have to be discerning and alert, following two basic credos from another preacher who has long departed to be with the Lord. In the first instance, he said, “Have as much sense as an old cow, eat the hay and leave the baling wire.” By that, I understand that not everything someone says is ingestible, I need to know what the hay is of the beneficial and the baling wire which is the packaging that is not edible and harmful.

I do not because I disagree with some things a person says then discount everything they have to say. I think there is a function of intelligence in being able to select the gems from the dirt or the rough. Nature is already a demonstration of that thinking.

We have always been human

Secondly, and I would paraphrase, “Do not follow anyone so close that you cannot cut away when they are falling into a ditch.” I guess someone else might say, “Keep a healthy distance and the door wide open.” Another variant of that would be something I read about a conversation between a mother and her daughter. “You have every reason to fall in love but get up and walk into your marriage.”

Do not yoke yourself to the untenable, make the allowances for the protection of your heart and your mind. Be smart and sensible, trusting just enough and verifying everything against the principled sources. In this case, when it comes to Christianity, that is the Word of God, the Bible.

I guess what always surprises me is how humanity in its fundamental nature has hardly changed. We can be persuaded in different ways to follow our basest instincts through charisma, sophistry, or just some force that through expediency we cannot resist.

Threatened powers fighting back

This brings us to the court of Pontius Pilate on the day that Jesus Christ was brought to trial before him, for he was the only political official who could sentence Jesus to death for the crimes that the chief priests had accused him of.

By the time Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, the priests were afraid that they would lose their religious influence on the Jews to Jesus Christ and their semi-autonomous political power to the Romans. They determined through Caiaphas the chief priest that Jesus should be put to death.

⁴⁸ If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”

⁴⁹ And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all,

⁵⁰ nor do you consider that it is expedient for ^[a]us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” [Bible Gateway John 11:48-50 (NKJV)]

From then on, a plan was hatched to put Jesus to death. Still, the other relevant things alluded to in the YouTube video are what happened on Palm Sunday and the symbolism of riding on a colt of an ass, Hosanna which in Judaism is a cry for help and not the Christian shout of praise, the laying down of palm branches has its significance in the apocryphal book of the Maccabees. They lay down their garments for him to walk on, as if for a king. [Nashville Catholic: Why Palms? The Significance of Palm Branches on Palm Sunday] [Jehu is king! Bible Gateway 2 Kings 9:13 (NKJV)]

We want Barabbas

Even as Pontius Pilate had determined that Jesus Christ was innocent and had done no wrong, the priests prevailed on the crowd to demand the head of Jesus. Pontius Pilate could have exercised his prerogative of power there and then, but instead, he presented the people with the choice between Barabbas and Jesus Christ.

Every inclination would suggest the people would choose the man who brought the gospel, healed the sick, and raised the dead. Still, they chose Barabbas and the priests for that moment seemed to secure their political advantage.

At that, the crowd went wild: “Kill him! Give us Barabbas!” [Bible.com Luke 23:18-25]

Still, at the point where Jesus gave up the ghost on the cross, the inner sanctum of their political and religious power that only the High Priest could enter was exposed as the curtain was rent to two.

The birth of Christianity came on the day of resurrection as the priests had inadvertently dispossessed themselves of what they sought to keep. More pertinently, in contemporary times, we have situations that present us with a Barabbas or a Jesus Christ and what obtains in the quest for political influence and power by religious entities is selecting Barabbas over Jesus Christ, the expedient over the necessary, the temporal over the eternal, the human over the godly.

Essentially, the religious folk are just like you and I, we might have high expectations of their choices, but we would be disappointed if we trust more in humans than we do in the divine. In the biblical and today’s context, I now understand why Donald Trump appeals to the evangelicals as they choose the political over the gospel and find ways to justify their indefensible stance.

Editorial: Thirteenth of May 2011

The guilty roam free

The credit crisis which has been felt globally for the past few years still has the architects of this catastrophe rolling in the quids without a care in the world.

Many have wondered how this happened and why it was pre-empted as the professionals have continually feigned that it caught them unawares.

The investigations of a US Senate committee have yielded grounds for indictments to be brought against first Goldman Sachs for basically playing both the market and their clients in fanciful financial products whilst divest themselves of their liabilities and cajoling other institutions to buying up what they knew for sure was worthless.

Untying the Gordian knot

The Rolling Stones article lays out the case of The People versus Goldman Sachs in such fine detail with the use of useful vivid analogies that the layman would catch on to what an almighty confidence trick this was.

This was work that the regulators and the Department of Justice should have done but were both derelict in their duties and suborned into a dastardly evil capitalist enterprise that has robbed everyone blind and made the gangsters of banking otherwise known as “Banksters” the masters of the world.

Now that the case has been made and all the footwork done, one would hope the cajones exist in the boxers, briefs, jocks or I dare say panties of those who matter to visit the full force of the law on these people and they should not relent until every dime as been paid including interest.

The world would never forgive us if these banksters get away with the biggest highwayman’s looting of the bullion ever.

Roam to Rome

Schengen, a town in Luxembourg where in 1985 European countries agreed to relax border controls allowing free movement within European borders, it represented a kind of unity amongst Europeans between 22 states.

It has worked a treat for Europeans as a sign of integration and unity without the encumbrance of passport checks, inane questions at customs and every other inconvenience that pertains to traversing borders.

The Arab uprising on the Southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea has been a matter of concern already but the unrest in Libya has brought it to a head.

Apparently, Colonel Gaddafi, the besieged and buffeted leader of Libya is allowing the untrammelled flow of sub-Saharan Africans and others across the sea to Malta and Lampedusa in Italy creating panic on those islands along with the administrative and logistic nightmares of processing these asylum seekers.

Visas made wiser

With no one responding to Italy’s concerns about this influx, the Italians granted temporary visas to these aliens who under the Schengen agreement could cross borders to countries where they might feel more comfortable by reason of joining relations, being able to speak the language or recognising a country as a soft target.

That got France to sit up since a good deal of these aliens speak French and by the time you knew it, Gaddafi’s deftness had sown division amongst NATO allies on the immigration front as they try to enforce the no-fly zone in Libya.

Fresh blood for right-wing vampires

Then every little-minded country with their right-wing populist fear-mongering personality with their villager-visits-city mind-set stepped into the fray stoking angst and horror at the hordes invading their sacred lands of purity and superiority – time to race to the lowest common denominator.

Shut the gates, batten down the hatches, pull up the draw bridges, barricade the doors and let the rabid dogs roam to bite any that dare walk the streets.

Globalisation is going into decline and the nation state rises again just because the Arabs have awoken to the possibility of self-determination. What a strange world we live in.

Acknowledgements

The fantastic report about the Senate committee’s unravelling of Goldman Sachs’ con-job was published online by the Rolling Stones Magazine. Wikipedia has a webpage that explains the Schengen Area and the Schengen Agreement.

The Guardian announces the news of the furore that has erupted about the influx of aliens and the possible radical revision of Schengen.

The Netherlands: A Coalition of the almost freedom

We might just have a government

The almost soporific coalition building process that separates the English-speaking governments like the UK and Australia from their continental European counterparts slowly came to a conclusion at the end of September in the Netherlands.

The elections of June produced a result that was not too far from expectations; the populist rhetoric of the right-wing elements had raked in dividends not enough to assume power but to become kingmaker.

With time the parties that cringed at getting into bed with this rather unpalatable bride found themselves in blushing embrace of each other copulating to create a bastard child that would have the town pointing fingers at it every time it came out to play.

The finger needs to scratch an itch

The Polder model concession-compromise deal-making political process in the Netherlands is under strain. It is like having three threatening holes in the dyke with Hans Brinker and friends plugging the holes with their fingers, however, one friend has got a nasty rash that needs a good scratch – that hole will not be plugged for long.

So the Christian Democrats (CDA)who lots big in the elections, the liberal sounding but right-wing VVD which would provide the Prime Minister and the PVV anti-Islam party have reached a deal with the PVV taking no cabinet responsibilities but able to bark and maybe bite from the periphery.

I would suppose there was a fear of allowing the PVV in government to prevent the sanctions that the Austrians suffered from the EU for going in coalition with an ultra-right-wing party years ago.

One only has to go through the agreement that makes up this coalition operating under the motto of “Freedom and Responsibility” to see that it has Geert Wilders paws, spittle and doggie poo all over it.

The message is the substance of horrid

Our intelligent being insulted with impunity that anything there represents freedom and the idea of responsibility is more along the lines of each Dutchman to his own.

Squaring populism with the realities of government is hard enough a task, if the Dutch would see what nasty hand they have been dealt is another thing.

Childcare and healthcare subsidies would be cut, probably in order to hit the pockets of the supposedly more fertile immigrants, it is however a measure that seems to gel with responsible handling of the economy in these tough times.

Immigrants emigrate with faces covered

Immigrants would now have to pay for their integration courses, they are not wanted and it would not be made easy for them to integrate, the Dutch language is hard enough; but why also give the immigrant a helping hand to belong amongst the Dutch?

In my over 10 years of living in the Netherlands and I live in Amsterdam, I have seen many things of Islamic orientation including streets in certain neighbourhoods designated alcohol free but I have never ever seen a woman in a burqa.

In fact, I am getting beyond myself here, I have never seen a person in a burqa, the sex of that person might have to be determined on closer inspection. Now, I regularly see people in full visor helmets which are for safety and protection – to the Muslim one might stretch the case for the burqa being for the safety of the person and the protection of that person’s honour.

No doubt, there is a conflict of civilisations where in the Middle-East the womenfolk are seemingly without expression but in the West the face is the link for any expression and communication, without the face and the eyes people become unsure of what and who they are dealing with.

The point I am trying to make is out of the 16 million inhabitants of the Netherlands we might not be able to count 1,000 people in a burqa and we are going to waste parliamentary time promulgating laws for a problem that does not exist but panders to a sense of fear that has been agitated to the extreme all around Europe.

Thinking it through

Most right-wing and populist rhetoric cannot stand intelligent scrutiny and it might well inform why education would get hit by this cabinet by the reduction of the duration of student grants from 4 to 3 years and the spending on arts and culture will be cut, lest I forget, integration tests are to be made more difficult.

For that last clause, the subtext is we don’t want immigrants, we will not help immigrants and those who strive to be integrated will have a tough time at it, the cultural schemes to help the process of integration will be starved of funds – basically, if you are not indigenous, start packing your bags – I am going nowhere, I am European.

If you work for the police or in the justice ministry you should leave your headscarf at home, I suppose the milliners can come up with amazing designs that make a mockery of that ban.

I had to lift this from the text, “Benefit cuts for people whose clothing or behaviour stops them finding work.” I suppose if I wore a suit for a cleaner’s job interview or I hate being sworn at I could be at risk.

All hot air to no particular end

You can go faster on the roads, you need to be a member of coffee shops to visit, prostitutes have to be old, Sundays will be kept holy for the 12 days where you can defile the temples in a year, stop and search might become indiscriminate, you could end up in prison longer, Israel will be a better friend and Europe will be getting less and much more eye watering stuff.

All of this to make the Netherlands a better place, the Dutch more comfortable with having their concerns addressed and the dawning of a great nation to rival the ranking of the Dutch in the golden age of the 17^th Century – if you believed that you have been had so badly, you will never cut lose.

This arrangement according to my itch analogy earlier might only last a few months before it disintegrates for a new election where Geert Wilders might well have beguiled enough to become Prime Minister, especially those who do not notice that having voted for him their minimal wage is to be reduced.

That cabinet will only last a few months and hopefully we are on for a reset for the electorate to move back to the centre – the experience would be painful but a veritable lesson would have been learnt very well.

Reference

A summary of the coalition agreement