(The following is a slightly edited version of an essay written a few years ago by me in Grace Life, our church magazine)
That is not my title, nor my theology. It is the title of an article published a few years ago by CNN’s Diana Butler Bass. And it is her theology.
Her title. Her theology.
Butler Bass (BB) and her article and her theology take aim at Donald Trump. President Trump told a lover of socialism and a hater of America that she should go back where she came from. BB thinks this is racist, sexist, and un-American of Trump. BB takes aim also at what she considers ‘Trump’s base,’ namely, white Christians. These were caught red-neck-handed rallying recently to show their enthusiastic support of Trump by chanting, “send her back.”
BB is especially aghast at the alleged theology of the President and his supporters. The theology she learned in the Methodist kindergarten is “God loves everybody and you should too.” This theology should translate, politically, into open borders, equality of opportunity, and, as nearly as possible, equality of ownership–same stuff, same amount, for everybody. God loves everybody, after all.
The theology that teaches “God loves everybody and you should too” is not, according to BB, the Trump theology, nor the theology of his (political) congregation. According to BB, Trump and his (white) Christian disciples have “a God problem.” They have exchanged the God of Love for “the God of the Master.” Theirs is “a masculine Sovereign, and a winner-God for people feeling displaced in a pluralistic world.” Trump and trumpettes should stop sounding forth and certainly stop translating into politics their views of “a scary God threatening sinners with hell,” of a white-European racist God and religion which for too long has stirred up hate and bigotry, leading to segregation and slavery, walls and wars, rich getting richer policies and legislation, and ICE enforcers. All of this wrong-headed theology only promotes unrest and justifiable protest and even lawlessness among the less fortunate and among those who simply march to a different non-binary drummer and who simply desire to live out the American dream, to feed their families, to live in peace, and according to the lifestyle and sexuality and according to whatever constitution, Bible, Koran, honor code, or inner feeling they choose. We all, everyone, should return to “the God of the peaceable kingdom.” This would mean not putting anyone down, and certainly not sending anyone back who disagrees with your god or your politics, your theology, or your constitution. It would mean welcoming them all…in. Like Jesus did. And would.
False Christianity’s title. False Christianity’s theology.
This BB theology, this CNN theology comes from somewhere. It comes from another CNN—Christianity Now Neutral. Christianity Now Nice. Christianity Now Nothing.
This neutral, nice, nothing Christianity has replaced God with a “love” that is whatever people love—so long as what people love is, though different, maybe even non-traditional, yet warm and fuzzy and harmless. It has exchanged God, the thrice holy God of the Scriptures, with the idol man. It has exchanged Christ, and the truth of our need for Christ, for humanity’s potential to love, and our need to develop that potential. Once believing in the power of the gospel to convert sinners, and in this need because otherwise we are all sinners in the hands of the holy God, Christianity now is largely under the spell of some power persuading many of the need to convert…God.
This idolatrous love theology, of the church that has for a long time been trending toward this, is increasingly reflected in national policy, political speeches, tweets, and in spokespersons who grew up sucking the breast and hearing the soothing, soporific lullabies of the false church mother (whom Revelation calls the great whore)–spokespersons such as Butler Bass. The love theology, according to the vocal, CNN Christianity should translate into the elimination of ICE and the formation of WARM—not only at the Mexican border, but at every boarder where folks are prone to build walls, fence tables, and otherwise keep the bad guys and the lawless out. So churches should be WARM, that is, inclusive, tolerant–churches of liberalism’s open door. So our nation should be WARM, by means of a warm and love and handouts to everybody government in promoting the US, that is ALL OF US together and equal. Just take what is now the jungle overgrown with capitalists and simply do this: cut down all the big trees (tax the wealthy to death), cut off the suckers (abort the babies), and make room for the saplings (eliminate student loan debts) and invasive species (welcome and grant health care and the right to vote to illegal immigrants). And all of this warm and fuzzy stuff, of course, and ironically, as we do battle together against global WARMING…
Antichrist and Worse Days Ahead
Revelation 13 speaks of two beasts. One beast rises out of the sea of nations. He is a political beast. The other comes up out of the earth, has two horns like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon. This is a religious beast. These beasts together unite to promote THE beast, that man of lawlessness, the antichrist. He is the one who is warm toward those who worship him, and kills all who do not…
This is what BB and her article and her theology, and the false church behind her theology and her ranting…is. It is part of the great movement of these very last days, the Antichristian kingdom of one nation and one world under the god Love. It is the union of church and state in the great and peaceable Babel, the kingdom of All Answers To Be Found in Man, and in the devil’s great Antichrist-man throwing science, and money and even lying wonders at every problem so that all the world marvels at and follows the beast.
Troublesome times, these, beloved. The pressure is on, even now, to compromise, and to be marked with the pox of ungodliness so that we and our children and young people may be known as those who are one with the tolerant and loving ones in the earth–rid, once for all, of all that divisive, bigoted biblical and Reformed faith and its outdated religion of the One Way, the One Truth, and the One Life in what can only be remembered, with a bitter taste in our sweet mouths, as the mean and nasty Jesus of Paul the predestinarian, and of Calvin the sectarian.
Do not bend. Let us be intolerant of any tolerance and any “love” that is at the expense of truth. Whatever politics is yours, or mine, have it, but only with the non-zeal of Jesus, whose interest was not in a kingdom of this world, but whose zeal for the Lord’s house, the Church His body and bride, consumed Him. Whatever walls your party may want to build or knock down for social justice, the preservation of the American way, or the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, let us man the ramparts of Zion, tell her towers to the generation following, and engage in the mission of the ages: the discipling of nations for Jesus’ sake.
Just remember this, in the middle of the battle that is and shall be: God will never have a bad week. He is sovereign over the nations. He does according to His will in the armies of heaven and earth (Daniel 4:35). And soon he will come with His own holy WARMTH: the fire of His wrath upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness and idolatry…the warm embrace of His love for all who look for His coming.
When He comes he will send sinners, not back to some country where the economy is bad and drug dealers threaten, but to the hell they have deserved.
When He comes He will take all His beloved, whose soul trust is Jesus, home.
That will be a good week. That will be a great day. For us. For God.
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