Ed Mazza, "Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: Trump’s Evangelical Backers Need To 'Shut The Hell Up'"
John Pavlovitz, who pastors North Raleigh Community Church in North Carolina, writes a heartfelt letter to white evangelicals:
Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.
They’re done.
They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:
They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.
They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet today, you openly give a "mulligan" to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion.With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.
They recognize the toxic source of your duality.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don't realize it, but you're digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you've gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you've lost a whole lot more.
You've lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.You've lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.You've lost any semblance of Christlikeness.You've lost the plot.And most of all you've lost your soul.
I know it's likely you'll dismiss these words. The fact that you've even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.
Maybe you need to read what he said again—if he still matters to you.
posted on 17 November at 03:48
You sir are sadly deluded. In a clear culture war btwn light and darkness, the likes of Obama etc represent the latter, and not because of his skin color, but because of his pro-abortion, pro-homosexual relations, pro-fornication, pro-victim-entitlement mentality, pro-class war, pro-racism, pro-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-Israel, and overall favoring perversions of what God ordained.
In this culture war we are given a choice btwn two 'captains" to sail a "ship" to our desired "desti-nation."
One captain maybe a non-drinking, faithful husband and inspiring orator who carefully chooses his words, but whose crew despises your family, supports killing innocents, and perverse unions, makes everyone concious of their skin color, and overall is determined to fundamentally sail hard to port on a course that history shows leads to destruction.
The other captain is one with a chekered moral past, and who, besides other faults, typically speaks what he is thinking, often brashly repeating things he hears that sound right to him but too often are erroneous. But who is intent on keeping his promisies, and has a strong basic sense of the right direction that the ship should sail towards and is very determined to sail the ship in that direction - despite the incessant salvos fireed at him from the opposing captian and crew.
In such a war then there is only one moral choice to make btwn the two, and it cannot be for the former, despite that character defects of the latter. For it is policy that most matters in this context.
Thus evangelicals voted about 80% for even a RINO Mormon versus the democrat, and over 70% for Bush and Mcain versus the liberal candidate.
For such such are proxy servants of satan, who rather evidently lusts for power and allegiance as he did in presuming to seat Himself in the place of the most high God, (Isaiah 14:14) in the first "Occupy movement," and then thru seducing Eve by essentially telling her that she was a victim of injustice by God for not sharing His "wealth," and that this was her right, and thus she was justified in obtaining it thru disobdence by which she would obtain it, rather than suffering punishment.
But this craft the devil presented himself as her savior, and Eve gave him power, her vote as it were, by heeding Him over God.
Likewis proxy servants of the devil - from Communists to todays liberals - use this craft to seduce souls to see themselves as victims of unjust oppression, which though some are, what is made to be the enemy are those who obtained benefits by merit which the "oppressed" are told belongs to them, and which the liberal saviors will obtain for them once they are in power.
saviors
posted on 16 November at 22:05
King David committed murder to steal another man's wife. Moses murdered the overseer. God does not always pick perfect people. At least Trump doesn't sacrifice children to Molech (abortion) like you. God really hates that.
posted on 16 November at 21:58
Whenever I see race-racketeering, virture signaling and broad brush condemnation of this obscene magnitude it always turns out that the one preaching virtue is guilty of what they are finger pointing about. A fitting verse for the pastor would be "take the plank out of your own eye." Scratch a crusty old white liberal SJW and reveal a dyed-in-the-wool closet bigot, homophobe, transphobe misanthrope every time. Pastor HEAL THYSELF!
posted on 16 November at 21:42
BTW: your sermon is riddled with strawmen.
posted on 16 November at 21:40
This is partisan pablum--not the words of Jesus Christ. We are all sinners, Reverend, and we all far short of the glory of God.