![\"donald](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/429\/2016\/08\/donald-trump-1.jpg\")
<\/a>July was quite a month of scandals. Do you remember when Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing? Or when the crowd at the RNC turned into a mob by chanting \u201cLock her up!?\u201d And we\u2019re wondering if Donald is in bed with Vladimir. Now as July turns into August, Hillary just can\u2019t get away from her scandalous emails. It\u2019s a train wreck. And I can\u2019t stop looking.<\/p>\nJeremiah Alberg defines scandal in his masterful book Beneath the Veil of the Strange Verses as, \u201cthose events, scenes, and representations to which we are attracted at the same moment that we are repelled.\u201d<\/p>\n
For me, Donald Trump is a walking scandal. His tweets are minute by minute opportunities for offense. Somehow, over the weekend Trump managed to get himself into a rivalry with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim couple who spoke at the DNC about their son who was killed in military combat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat an idiot!\u201d I think to myself as the scandals come, one after the other. And Alberg\u2019s definition rings true. I am repelled by Trump, but, and this is hard for me to admit, I\u2019m also attracted to him like a moth to a flame.<\/p>\n
I love a good scandal because they are based on rivalry with the other. My instant reaction of \u201cWhat an idiot!\u201d is coupled with a sense of arrogance. As Alberg claims, \u201c\u2026 what drives the scandal is the secret thought, \u2018I could do it better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to see the dangers involved with scandal, but scandals are not evil. They are human. In fact, if we look long enough at scandal, we can learn something important about ourselves. Indeed, scandals can justify a superiority complex over and against our rival, but scandals can also be a bridge that allows us to love our rival as we love ourselves.<\/p>\n
Let me get a bit personal. My involvement in scandal tells me more about myself than it does about anyone else. Scandals are always based on a relationship of admiration and repulsion with a rival, but \u2013 again this is hard to admit \u2013 my rival reflects to me what I find repulsive about myself.<\/p>\n
Scandals reveal our shadow side, that part within us that needs to \u201cbe redeemed,\u201d as Alberg puts it. An aspect of my shadow is my admiration for Trump\u2019s ability to gain and manipulate our national attention. Yes, I\u2019m repulsed by his consistent attempts to expel and marginalize groups of people, but I\u2019m also fascinated by his ability to gain the devotion and admiration of countless people.<\/p>\n
So scandals can teach us something important about ourselves, if we have the right tools for examining scandals. Alberg provides one such tool, what he calls \u201cthe hermeneutics of forgiveness.\u201d (Hermeneutics is a big scholarly word that basically means interpretation.) The best way to manage scandal is not to avoid it. Nor is it to accuse our rivals, which is really to accuse those shadow parts in ourselves that our rival reflects back to us. The best way to manage scandal is to go through it with the spirit of forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Alberg is quick to state that this form of forgiveness is not primarily about forgiving the one who caused scandal. Rather, it\u2019s about our openness to receiving forgiveness for ourselves. Personally, I\u2019m constantly getting caught up in our cultural scandals, which are motivated by a sense of channeling group hatred over and against another, in my case, Donald Trump. Trump is the one person my progressive friends and I can agree to hate with impunity.<\/p>\n
What kind of world do we want? I want a world that isn\u2019t run by the scandal of hatred. Donald Trump directs cultural hatred and fear against Muslims, Mexicans, Latinos, and many other groups. And I see inside myself a desire to reflect that hatred back onto Trump. But I don\u2019t want a world of hatred. Expelling Trump through hatred will only ensure that the spirit of\u00a0hatred will come back to haunt us like never before.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne can get beyond the scandal through forgiveness,\u201d writes Alberg, \u201cnot by forgiving the scandal but by receiving forgiveness from this \u2018scoundrel\u2019 for what we have done to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
This \u201cscoundrel\u201d that Alberg refers to is Jesus Christ. Jesus, like Donald Trump, was a walking scandal to his culture. He challenged the people of his day to drop their \u201cus versus them\u201d mentality for the sake of love. But old habits of hatred are hard to break, and people are scandalized when their hatred is challenged. That\u2019s why we often find Christ\u2019s universal forgiveness to be scandalous. So the hatred that Jesus confronted nailed him to the cross. In fact, Pontius Pilate and Herod, two former enemies, became united in their hostility against Jesus. The same can be said about the crowd that united in chants of \u201cCrucify him!\u201d The same can be said about us, whenever we join a crowd that directs hatred against anyone that we accuse of scandalizing us.<\/p>\n
And when we get caught up in the crowd, as we most surely will, Jesus the \u201cscoundrel\u201d is there to offer forgiveness. He isn\u2019t scandalized by our hatred. Rather, he universally forgives it. As he prayed from the cross, \u201cFather, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\u201d That\u2019s where we find the \u201chermeneutics of forgiveness.\u201d Once we receive the Father\u2019s forgiveness, our lives can be transformed as we begin to offer that forgiveness to ourselves and to others.<\/p>\n
Image: Flickr, \u201cDonald Trump,\u201d By Gage Skidmore<\/a>, Creative Commons License<\/a>, some changes made.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July was quite a month of scandals. Do you remember when Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing? Or when the crowd at the RNC turned into a mob by chanting \u201cLock her up!?\u201d And we\u2019re wondering if Donald is in bed with Vladimir. Now as July turns into August, Hillary just can\u2019t get away from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1651,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[785,68,106,329,703,215,170],"class_list":["post-3714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-donald-trump","tag-forgiveness","tag-jeremiah-alberg","tag-politics","tag-redemption","tag-rivalry","tag-scandal"],"yoast_head":"\n
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