Donald Trump is not an American aberration as many of my friends think; instead he is as American as apple pie. He is 100 percent American going back as far as the revered George Washington. Currently he is tied in the polls, indicating that many Americans agree with him, including many Christians.
Both George Washington and Donald Trump are rich, white males; GW was a deist, and personally I think DT is a practicing deist.
In between GW and DT, Americans settled [stole] the West. I just finished rereading James Michener's magnificent historical novel titled Centennial; the book honestly and accurately documents how white males, wanting to be rich, massacred Indians and despised and exploited Mexicans. In the 1990s, President Clinton, a good friend to blacks, did little or nothing to reverse the Reagan wealth gap nor reverse the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Hispanic males. Even his welfare reform was more conservative than liberal. The first "black" president, but some of his policies were anti-black.
Most rich, white males believe in and practice some version of the American trinity---Democrat or Republican---the American trinity of hyper individualism, hyper materialism, and hyper ethnocentrism. Of course, they rename the American trinity in an effort to sanctify their social evils. They call hyper individualism, freedom, but it is a freedom undisciplined by love and unrestrained by justice. Paul, in Galatians, called this abuse of freedom "an opportunity for the flesh."
Americans call hyper materialism, prosperity, but it is corporate capitalism which destroys community. loots natural resources, and pollutes the environment.
We call hyper ethnocentrism, American exceptionalism, but it runs roughshod over all non-Anglos, killing, enslaving, and stealing land and labor at random.
So what we are talking about is a Trump problem, but it is much than that; it is an enduring AMERICAN problem.
From personal experience, I know something about the intense cultural pressure to conform, to enjoy either white superiority or male superiority or white economic privilege. In fact, I needed a second conversion in April 1968---a conversion that made me intensely aware of social oppression and the need for social justice. Since then I have benefitted from 50 years of mentoring by Martin Luther King, Tom and Barbara Skinner and John Perkins as well as 35 years living in America's ghettos.
It can be a real battle to eliminate just one of the trinity---rich or white or male superiority/dominance. When a person has all three in combination, it is like a cultural demon possession. Few Americans I know have conquered all three.
So we all desperately need biblical truth, God's insights. In NT times, Jews thought they were superior to Gentiles; males were superior to females, masters superior to slaves and rich superior to poor. They had the same rich, white male trinity. What to do?
The full biblical gospel has the answer. Galatians 3:28, The Message, "In Christ's family, there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave or free, male and female. Among us you are all equal." In Colossians 3, a similar message: "Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free mean nothing. . . . everyone is included in Christ."
In Luke 4:18-30, we find Jesus tackling two of these problems: economic oppression [rich-poor], and Jewish ethnocentrism against Gentiles. The white American church seems to lack the wisdom and courage to follow and imitate Jesus; they prefer comfortable stained glass worship instead.
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