What can we learn from listening to the words of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-3)? She claims to be following in the steps of the lord Jesus. Is she right?
Not long ago, Boebert appeared on Huckabee, a political commentary program on Newsmax, hosted by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R). She was as cute as a button, as fresh as a daisy, and dripping with feminine confidence. The audience hung on her every word and the host admired her openly.
Huckabee: “It’s clear that you’re not timid and you’re not afraid to let people know that you are a Christian believer and that that’s what gives you your core values and your core strength. Do you find that people just want you to ‘tone it down a little bit, Congresswoman’ … do you hear that?”
Boebert: “You know, I think people would love it if I would tone it down. But, you know, we had our Lord Jesus certainly didn’t tone it down for anyone…And then they tried to cancel Jesus, but you can’t cancel God…We right now are charged to be bold in this time and God has given us a spirit of power and might and a well-disciplined mind and not a spirit of timidity. So I say get out there and be bold.”
Where is Jesus in this statement? Lauren Boebert seems to suggest that because Jesus was bold at times, she can be bold all the time. She is making a very, very dangerous assumption. Jesus was bold because he flowed in the perfect will of God. We need to operate in much greater humility. In fact (as I’ve written elsewhere), when looking at Jesus’ moments of boldness, we may do well to put ourselves in the Pharisee’s shoes, not Jesus’.
Yes, Paul reminded Timothy that God had given him “a spirit of power and might and a well-disciplined mind,” but the context of his remark was not an exhortation to recklessness.
Huckabee and Boebert talked about Boebert’s support for the right to carry a weapon; she bragged about how the waitresses in her restaurant pack heat. They discussed Biden’s alleged poor choice in shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline, but failed to address the elephants in the room: the damage it caused to the environment, or its encroachment on indigenous people’s sacred lands.
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Where is Jesus in this conversation? While the Christian walk is certainly more nuanced than “turn the other cheek,” it’s hard to imagine Christ walking around with a machine gun (or even a sword). At least some mindfulness in her application of the Second Amendment would be in order (for example, Boebert might have exhibited a little compassion by not tweeting a Christmas photo in which her young sons carried firearms, just days after a school shooting that left four dead).
As for the Keystone XL, again Jesus is missing. His deep empathy for the marginalized suggests that the conversation could have included something of an acknowledgement of the damage to the environment, the wounding of native Americans – if not a complete change of policy.
Lack of decorum
More recently, Rep. Boebert and her chum Marjorie Taylor Greene sat together at President Biden’s State of the Union speech, heckling him at inopportune moments – like when he was trying to talk about American veterans with cancer possibly due to burn pit exposure. One of the victims had been Biden’s son Beau.
Boebert later tweeted, “The left is pissed because I called out Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 of America’s finest in a flag-draped coffin. They are mad because a speech was ‘interrupted’. Ask the … families who lost their loved ones how interrupted their lives are now.”
For someone who claims to emulate Jesus, this looks like an epic fail: her impertinence toward the President, her irreverence toward the memory of his son – followed not by an apology, but a doubling down on her position. Ms. Boebert may have forgotten that sometimes, Jesus clammed up, and that Ecclesiastes 3 exhorts us, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven…a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”
So as not to give any more oxygen to this woman who craves nothing more than attention, I’ll stop here…but much more could be said.
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FEATURED IMAGE: “The Pink Mafia” by Dunechaser is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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