Not only are religious leaders/pastors/theologians learning they are losing members, especially young people, along comes new polling revealing this finding:
“Among those who plan to vote for Trump, 71% feel that what he tells them is true — higher than the results for friends and family (63%), conservative media figures (56%) or religious leaders (42%).”
With those findings in mind, note this stark fact: Trump is a pathological, serial liar. Even some of his most well known cheerleaders know that. I’m stating the obvious. I might as well be saying something like, “the sun is hot.”
To believe that Trump is more trustworthy than those other categories of people would be like honestly believing the two guys in Dumb and Dumber were smarter than everyone else in the movie. It is that comical and incredible. Unfortunately, it’s also pitifully sad and a danger to the nation.
Additionally, many of the those who responded to this poll are people who claim to be Christians. They claim to care about the truth. Imagine claiming you care about the truth, that telling lies on a regular basis is a grievous sin, and, at the same time, believing Trump over you friends, family, and pastor or priest. I left out media figures because they’re a mixed bag. Regardless, it boggles the mind people could be that mixed up, unreasonable, unwise, and gullible.
If you’ve ever wondered how so many Christians and just regular German people could follow one man over a cliff in 1930s Germany, or how so many people could follow someone like Jim Jones and drink the Kool-Aid, well, now you know. It’s happening again right before our very eyes. We are living it.
When I think of people who believe one person (and a small group around that person) over their family, friends, and pastor or priest, I think of a cult member. That is exactly what happens to cult members. They think everyone else is lying to them, even people they know love them and they have known their whole lives or a big part of their lives. They think their pastor or priest is lying to them. Everyone is wrong and lying, except this one person. Sounds reasonable, right? Ummm…no, it doesn’t. It sounds insane.
It’s a sign of deep dysfunction.
And perhaps they don’t think people are necessarily lying to them; they may think that everyone else is just ignorant of the truth and they only need the right information. Such gives little comfort, however, because that is still not a rational or reasonable view, especially when it comes to the political or scientific realm.
The facts are out there. The information is out there. If anything, we have too many facts, too many instances, too much information regarding the lies and subterfuge. We are not talking about simply differences of political philosophy—such cannot not be founded or verified empirically. We are talking about lies—straight-up lies. We can verify those. It’s been done over and over again.
The problem with Trump isn’t his political philosophy (if we can even call it such—it’s rather an incoherent jumble of policy positions built around personality and a pure will to power), the problem in this instance is his lies and the almost seemingly inability to tell the truth (for instance, lying about his weight at his last booking). Look: That is just a fact.
To then have a segment of the population thinking he’s more believable, more trust-worthy than their family, friends, and pastor or priest is to have a segment of the population incapable of reason. This is a segment of the population that is incredibly gullible, as in the sense of small children. Perhaps it’s the result of a catastrophically inadequate social/cultural/educational upbringing/conditioning for society, given the inability to use basic reason and logic when it comes to processing information and sifting lies from facts.
By the way, I would be pointing this out if it were coming from a segment of leftists/Democrats/liberals, if they too developed a cult following around a single leader or small group. I would point this out and think it ridiculous even if I agreed with their political philosophy. Regardless of where on the political spectrum it comes from, it is not healthy. It is toxic.
We’ve seen where the possibility of mass communication wielded by a single charismatic cult figure can lead. It led to world war. It led to gas chambers. It led to mass suicide. It led to unspeakable evil.
The True Believers, the MAGA faithful, those who adorn their bodies, vehicles, and homes with icons of Trump, shirts, hats, flags, banners, etc., are best understood as members of a cult. A pagan cult (that smuggles in and misuses/misunderstands Christian symbols and terminology) built around one man and his falsehoods, his deceptions, misinformation, information taken out of context, and labyrinth of lies.
The fact these cult members also claim to be Christian, that they believe this man over their pastor, priest, and Christian leaders is a staggering indictment of the current state of discipleship, of spiritual formation in certain segments of Christianity in this country.
Yes, it is also terrible these people believe someone as white-light-blinding a liar and duplicitous a person as Trump over their friends and family, but I am speaking specifically in this post as to these findings and Christian leaders. Of the groupings noted, they are the least believed.
And let’s break this down even further. It would not surprise me that many, if not a majority, of the people who believe and trust Trump over their family, friends, and religious leaders are either fundamentalists or evangelicals.
There is also that category of the nominal “Christian” who hardly ever goes to church, knows little about the Bible, but believes in some fantasy version of “God, guns, and guts” and conflates Christianity with being a white American. In their minds, Jesus was like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. I would imagine that pleasant slice of Americana falls into this same group as well. However, let’s put that group aside for a moment and consider fundamentalists/evangelicals—people who should know better.
What does this current state of affairs tell fundamentalist/evangelical/ religious leaders, the pastors and theologians in those traditions? Think about it: For decades and longer these leaders have told their people to read their Bibles, memorize passages of scripture, and to live with that simplistic creed, “the Bibles says it, I believe it, and that settles it!”
They’ve stressed the importance of truth and truth-telling. They are familiar with the passage that tells us the devil is the father of lies. They are familiar with the passage that tells us that Jesus “is the Truth.” Central to the Christian faith is the matter of truth. They claim to know all this. Consider their stress upon apologetics and the reasonableness and truth of the Christian faith. They claim to know what a bad argument is or failures of logic and reason. They claim to be able to discern lies from truth.
So what happened? How did we get here? Something has gone terribly off the rails. The problem is that the rest of the nation has to deal with the consequences of this dysfunction (January 6th for example). Fundamentalist and evangelical pastors/leaders/theologians: On this Labor Day, perhaps instead of resting, you may want to labor over these questions. Asking for a nation.
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