Pro-Trump evangelical Kenneth Copeland laughs manically over media calling Biden’s win – YouTube
“And the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, say to her, You are a land that is not cleansed or rained upon in the day of indignation. The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in her midst. Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ when the LORD has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord GOD.” Ezekiel 22: 23 – 31
These words recorded in the book of Ezekiel, which are better than 2500 years old, apply today—because people are people. I’ve linked this biblical passage to some ‘teaching’ from an old, powerful, laughing fool millions call a prophet of God. Copeland called down curses to end the COVID in Jesus name; COVID is still around killing lots of people. This man of braggadocios falsehood has no fear of anything, and neither are his mask-less followers who have too much faith to fear the virus Ken has cursed. In the faithful ‘Christian’ sense, as demonstrated by this behavior, the virus just kills those who lack a sufficient amount and quality of faith. God loves some more than he loves the others.
Being wrong (in a scientific, objective falsifiable sense anyway) apparently has no perceived negative consequence for the faithful (at least for now.) Copeland is a very rich man, and he is thick as thieves with the New Apostolics—a godfather of sorts who claims to have regular conversations with the Almighty. Thousands of imitators have risen from his example. The poison of this ‘movement’ has infected the Church as this yeast works its way through the dough. We believe these people even if we are not consciously aware of them; and when we are (aware of them) the cognitive dissonance has reached the level of absurd—we fear them despite these slick tricksters being so despicably and predictably wrong all the time. It pains me that I am largely a pariah among the faithful since I would dare speak against those who’ve prophesied so clearly about the One in which so many have placed their hope. Dare I say, the LORD has not spoken? One heresy; let’s move on to more of my heretical positions, shall we?
Trump has lost the election (cue the laughter;) but he has a plan. He is free the lie to the people and doing so serves a very important purpose; his millions of devoted followers, who seem to have lost the power of discernment, will ensure that Trump maintains power within the GOP. Trump knows this; future candidates will have to “kiss the ring” to gain his endorsement. The latest information has it that a clear majority of white evangelical ‘Christians’ support Trump come hell or high water. Their ‘prophets’ have them snowed into thinking our hope lies in #DiaperDon; and many still maintain the prophecies concerning Trump remain true. As you hear it in my language, I am beyond angry. This ‘prince’ of ours feeds on us; and our prophets empower him to do so. The Christian Right has sold itself to the lies of State Power. And no, I will not join you as I’ve become convinced that there must be division before there can be healing.
Jesus had a radical message for the religious leaders of his day. Those leaders had settled into the Roman system of oppression while feathering their own nests. Jesus preached division just as the Old Testament prophets preached separation between clean and unclean. The lines between which have been redefined to suit today’s anxieties. This question of separation has become akin to the Judaizer debate in the book of Acts. We continue on to insist the others must become like us to be acceptable to God—this, frighteningly enough (as it has ample historical precedence) lies along racial lines (as well as along ideological ones defined by our prophets.) The Others need to bend the knee, to become circumcised in a way, to assuage our fear and to bolster our confidence that we are right in our faith. Just what does it mean to be right? From what ought we separate?
Firstly, and for example, I don’t think that ceremonially there is a ‘right’ way to worship God. We have it in our heads, since it has grown in our minds as a form of entertainment, that gathering and singing certain songs, is the way to worship God. It is not that it is wrong in itself, but everything has its season; right now, we are in COVID season. Now Christians, like horse’s asses, are insisting this is THE way to worship God and by extension thrown a host of other cautions to the wind as we assert the right to worship God. Need I remind you that God’s Word says He desires mercy not sacrifice? How many have died as a result of you all asserting your rights to congregate (and many pictures have you largely mask-less) and breath the virus into each other’s lungs to then take it out into the world to infect others? Many, whom you are charged to be a witness, rightly see this behavior as merciless. Do your feelings trump mercy?
Secondly, the Bible talks about truth, a lot. How is it that when our prophets are obviously wrong, we still fear them? How is it that we follow them and the herd to embrace someone like Trump—whose divisiveness, racism, misogyny, cruelty and dishonesty is clearly demonstrable? It is beyond evident that his claims concerning the election are false; he can lie to his followers to his own benefit but he (and his agents) cannot make stuff up in Court—there are consequences (thankfully still) for lying there. This is why most of his cases have been dismissed—the is no merit to them. But our ‘prophets’ have ‘smeared whitewash’ for him and so we fear losing our investment. Is ‘truth’ what we make it (by faith)? Or is truth something larger (and intensely frightening)?
We are sitting upon a large pile of death. We stand separated amid death and suffering screaming at each other so the other will come to our side so there can be unity. Can there be unity under a banner of lies? We can’t even agree about the science of Covid as the virus is spread by those little viruses hitching a ride on the particulate matter we exhale from our lungs. We don’t even have the common courtesy to do our best to limit the risk to others. We don’t even have the discernment to hold our President to his own spoken and written words and the thousands of obvious lies therein to instead cry about ‘fake news’ and how they’re out to get him. (Seriously, how stupid are we?) Truth is lost.
We claim to be ‘Pro-life’ but back the man who oppresses the sojourner—this man’s policies literally made hundreds of orphans. (But who gives a shit right? They’re foreigners, brown people at that.) We back the man who stoked the violence to stir you all up for ‘law and order.’ We back the man who unashamedly told police officers to not be gentle, that it’s okay to rough them up a little. We back the man who insists the State has the right to kill. It’s just us and ‘them;’ the ‘thin blue line’ enforces this separation to the death of many. Tell me why, pro-lifers, why you are better than twice as likely to die by police action as a black man than as a white one? It’s fear and all the racist bullshit I still hear from people I talk to. (There is no way a black man is better than twice as dangerous as a white man.) We claim to be ‘pro-life’ but we back a man who has all but shut down access to asylum. Legal immigration has become prohibitively expensive. We extort money from the alien and cheered when our champion put a religious test (meaning that some are more ‘equal’ than others under the law) on immigration. We deny certain people, viewed as dangerous (and/or inferior,) justice to assuage our fear and empower our princes to ‘protect’ us.
Yes, the ‘sacred’ number of 30,000 has been reached but as look out into our neighborhoods, I see thousands of broken people. This is breaking me. It breaks me that even those who don’t have a religious reason to back Trump do so because they believe he will put more money in their pocket. We look aside from all Trump’s own looting to listen to all his bullshit about ‘draining the swamp’ (i.e. ending the kleptocracy.) Trillions are flowing up, and marvelously so under Trump’s watch, to the world’s richest people who have the money to write the laws which direct all that money upward. Trump distracts you by getting you to believe the poor brown people are the cause of your economic malaise. Yeah, we’re pro-life alright. Dare I say, for starters, if we were really ‘pro-life,’ we’d let go of all the military pork to let the economy re-direct those resources to the poor—but who going to vote for closing the base or bomb factory near you? Dare I say, if we were really pro-life, we’d let go of all that nonsense about Israel being the lynchpin of all our eschatological hopes for Jesus’ return. Yes, I mean it and here is (one of the many reasons) why.
Jesus, when being tempted by Satan to throw himself off the Temple, did not give Satan the knowledge of the way it was all going to go down; it is not wise to give your enemy the battleplan before the battle. If Jesus wasn’t wise enough to inform Satan that either He couldn’t be killed or that God would simply raise Him back to life, then that knowledge would have very likely changed Satan’s strategy to screw things up, would it not? Likewise, do you honestly think God told our ‘prophets’ and ‘teachers’ to write down the battleplan for the ‘big seven’ for all to see, wouldn’t Satan be seeing all that as well? The only way out of this would be to deny Satan freewill; but then you’d have God on the hook for all the rivers of blood which will flow according to all the ‘Left Behind’ fantasies. It is all so unnecessary and destructive.
Simply consider Jesus’ example (1 Peter 2: 21,) He said the time is in the Father’s hands and not to worry about it (Acts 1: 6-8.) His example showed that God designs things to happen according to people’s character—we are not actors running a script, but agents called to work for justice and mercy. I have faith that His plan will work because He knows us. When we stubbornly make up stuff to engineer the ‘big’ future, we put ourselves on the hook for all the blood and injustice which comes by our hubris. When our ‘prophets’ write us a script to ‘work’ for, I’m positive they did not hear from God because that script leads us to embrace the hope for a bloody future, ignoring the plight of our brothers and sisters being oppressed in violation of decency, freedom, and international law. I believe Satan is a likely author of all the ‘Left Behind’ stuff so we’d support many unjust and merciless policies in the name of God. As I see it, Satan’s devices are working well to drag us into the filth.
Trump has been compared to Cyrus who provisioned the Jews to return to Jerusalem. I am in the minority by agreeing “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Yet, my peers put heavy emphasis on Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol despite the oppression of real people in the occupied territories. For this, all Trump’s lies and cruelties are apparently overlooked. The ‘Left Behind’ stuff is a big part of why we support Trump; as well as general fear (of others) and greed. Trump’s rise was built on a mountain of lies, so it is no surprise that such an apparatus brought us a liar (and a thief.) Built on a career of bankruptcies, lawsuits, destroyed businesses, and lies, Trump, in character, is currently stealing our confidence in the system which allows those with differing opinions to live with each other. There can be no abiding such a man if you haven’t lost your mind (and your heart.)
If we are going to get through this, we cannot allow one man to dictate truth. We need to ditch the fear of being called out when we are wrong—it is a vital, corrective process. It is a truly weak person who cannot tolerate being questioned but we elected such a person to be our representative. Calling each other out is the very process by which we can get closer to the truth and maintain the greatest amount of freedom for all of us. This is scary, I know. ‘Certainty’ might be comforting but it is a sure path to grave error and profound hubris which leads to great suffering. (There is hope; the Court system has been doing a great job defending us from the Trumpian ‘truth’ of unfounded accusations.)
In conclusion, using the device of repetition to hammer this in, I would say that if we are to heal, we must separate ourselves from the lies of our prophets and princes. We must retrain our ability to discern the deceivers from the deceived so we may shun the former while having mercy on the latter. Feelings are endlessly feckless and manipulatable; our heads need to return to the game. We need to separate from the fear which compels us to embrace those who offer ‘certainty.’ There are no easy answers when people are involved. We need to separate ourselves from pining for an authoritarian ‘solution’ to protect us from that which we (are manipulated to) fear. Do not fear (Luke 12: 4.) We need to separate ourselves from the ‘prophets’ who are tearing us to pieces by spreading the lies which lead us to evil. We need to separate ourselves from those who trust in ‘chariots and horses’ (i.e. State Power. See Psalms 20: 7) to solve moral problems to rather lead by example (James 5:10) through working for justice and mercy for all. “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13: 15.) Again, Jesus did not advocate for the cynical use of State Power to solve moral problems, He taught us to lead by example, to act justly, and to show mercy. It is sad the seculars are clearly leading this call.
Admitting fault is the difficult path; will we be willing to admit we were wrong when the whole ‘Christian Right’ thing implodes, and ‘we’ lose power? Without repentance there can be no healing; there can only be hatred, blame, shame, and mutual indignation for all. Isn’t this the antithesis of what the Christian faith is about?