A Little Mammon Ruins the Whole Loaf

It only takes the slightest change to make a very, very large difference.

For example, there's the human genome.  My genetic material, the basic information written into our DNA?  It's what makes us human, and what makes each human being different from every other human being.  The tiniest tweak, and we're a different person.

Larger variances make us not human at all.

Eighty percent of our fundamental genetic makeup is identical to that of cattle.  Eighty five percent, we share with mice.  So only a fifteen percent variance, and we're scuttering around beneath the floorboards and leaving little rice-sized poop pellets on the kitchen counter.

We become something categorically different.  A cow is not a human is not a mouse, eh?

I've been meditating on difference and Christian faith lately, as I lead the adult ed class of my little church through reflections on race, difference, and what binds us together as Jesus folk.  One of the great strengths of Christian faith, as I see it, is its ability to exist polyculturally.  The Gospel speaks in every language, and can adapt to the forms and norms of every human culture.

Not that we haven't squabbled over everything and anything, including a single vowel in a single Greek word in one statement of faith.  But Christian unity is formed and shaped by the grace of the Spirit, and our willingness to care for one another despite our manifold differences.  I see Jesus in Methodist and Mennonite, in Catholic and Charismatic, in Orthodoxies both Slavic and Amhara.  We're progressive and conservative, plain and erudite, and all of it can be truly Christian.

Still, there are areas where I'll admit I have always struggled, particularly where the Gospel becomes focused on wealth and prosperity.  

That's kind of a problem right now.

The Prosperity Gospel is ascendant in our culture, the dominant form of the faith, to the point where it's really the closest thing America has to a state religion.  As acolytes of Kenneth Copeland's Word of Faith movement now sit at the heart of power, there's never been a moment when this movement has been as prominent as a form of Christian expression. 

The language of Prosperity Preachin', as I've noted numerous times over the years, about 80 percent comprised of recognizable Christian theology.  Read through the writings of Creflo A. Dollar, or endure one of Paula White's surprisingly listless sermons, and you'll find most of it almost kinda sorta works.  

But that twenty percent variance makes a difference, enough so that it is no longer reflective of the teachings of Jesus.

Money money money, gain gain gain, ever bigger ever more?  There's no version of Jesus who pointed us towards material wealth and social influence. There's no version of the Jesus we know from the Gospels that tolerated venality and indulgence as a marker of spiritual blessing.   You can bowlderize him into a shambling FrankenChrist golem that makes that case, sure, but a plain reading of the Nazarene's intent just won't get you there.  It's uncanny valley Jesus, Jesus shifted and warped to serve the demands of our endless capitalist avarices.

Wealth, as Jesus taught about it, is a dangerous thing for the soul.  The wealthier you are, the more likely it is that you're in some serious spiritual mess.  You have built your house on the sand of human imaginings.  Our material gain is, at best, a dishonorable thing that must be bent to the use of grace with cunning and intention.  

You cannot, said my Lord and Savior in a very declarative way, serve God and wealth. 

Speculation and Morality

Immediately following the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the religious chatter about Trump got waaaaay more intense.

His supporters felt that this near miss marked him as protected by God, that it was a sign that he was a necessary part of God's plan for America.  Like King David, like Cyrus of Persia, Trump is the anointed one, the vessel of the Divine intent.  Trumpist theology has always had a divine-right ring about it, which...given that his supporters are essentially monarchists...shouldn't be much of a surprise.

Others had very different ideas, ones that seem a little closer to the reality of who Trump is.  Among some fringe communities of evangelicals who haven't missed that Trump is the exact opposite of Jesus in every way, the failed assassination attempt and the wound to Trump's ear fulfilled the terms of Revelation 13:3.  "There it is," they said.  "There's the head wound, and the wondering world!"  Trump is, they suggest, the Little Horn, the adversary of Christ, whose amorality, worldliness, and pathological falsehood marks him as the Antichrist.  The end times are at hand!

Both are...off.

Trump's "faithful" supporters are off, because, c'mon.   Christ's purposes are never served by lies and bullying.  Christ's purposes are never served by showing cruelty to the stranger, or by refusing shelter to a fellow Christian.  Ever.  Not ever.  Period.  The Gospel must be expressed in our every action, and the dark logics of your theological consequentialism can be used to excuse any evil.  Sure, he's done what he promised.  But just because the devil fulfills his end of the bargain doesn't mean you haven't sold your soul.

As the author of the definitive book on Trump's Antichrist nature, I might seem closer to the latter camp.  At least the folks who are freaked out about him have the advantage of not being bamboozled by Trump's transactional schtick.  And I will admit, the whole head wound thing is a little creepy, as is the depth to which the American faithful now stand in Trump's thrall.

The challenge, though, is that none of that matters.  The question, for Christians, is never about the details of the end times, or about the mechanics of messianic fulfillment.  Jesus was really, really specific about that.  Don't speculate about those things, he said.  Don't trust anyone who speculates about it.

Our task, as Christians, is not to worry about when it all comes down.  Because if you're a Christian, if you've committed yourself to being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, again: none of that matters.  None of it.  If you're claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the end times have already arrived for you.

The Christian has already stepped over to a different way of life, one that manifests itself in the values and ethos that Jesus lived and taught.  It doesn't matter where we are in the scheme of things.  We must live, right now, as if that time were fulfilled.  My moral commitments are the same, no matter where we are in the arc of history.  Faced with an cruel emperor, a totalitarian state, a flagrant charlatan, or a decadent mammonist culture, none of that changes.

Love neighbor.  Love enemy.  Feed the hungry.  Clothe the naked.  Show hospitality to the stranger.  Speak the truth, and show grace.  Refuse the sword, and turn your back on the sweet poison of wealth.  This is the basic value-set of discipleship, no matter when, no matter what.

When we get lost in wild end-times speculation, we too easily lose sight of that discipled moral agency.  We start living in a world of abstractions and phantasms, rather than in the reality of our day-to-day choices.  We forget both our Christian freedom and our Christian duty.