Sometimes I assume things that I shouldn’t assume.
- I assume that NFL fans know better than to think
their team has any legitimate chance at winning the Super Bowl given that the
deal between the New England Patriots and Satan is still binding.
- I assume that people know that no matter how
petulant, absurd, or outrageous President Trump’s latest tweet is, the
mainstream media will so over-feverishly attack him for it that Trump will
somehow end up looking like the sane one.
- I assume that Christians know that
self-proclaimed Christian author and pastor John Pavlovitz is a political
activist who commandeers the Word of God for profit, not an actual minister of
the Gospel of Jesus.
And it was this last false assumption that I was recently
reminded of when several Christian readers reached out to me after Pavlovitz
tweeted the “Lessons Trump Supporters are Teaching Their Children”:
“I don’t teach my children any of these things,” one of them
wrote to me. Of course she doesn’t. Neither do countless other Christian
parents like her. And they don’t condone the President when he does any of
these things either.
I’ll admit that one of the most bizarre things to witness
during the era of Trump has been the reversal of roles between partisans on
both sides of the political spectrum. The Party of “character matters” has
taken a pragmatic, “the president does things that I find off-putting, but he’s
getting good things done” approach. Meanwhile, the Party of “separation of
church and state” has suddenly become a Puritanized integrity police when it
comes to presidents.
This is a particularly astounding reversal for public
figures like Pavlovitz. Keep in mind, this is the same “Christian pastor” who counseled his flock,
“One of the greatest failings I see in my fellow Christians, is assuming that they can determine what is natural for someone else; what is their real, their truth, that they can decide for another person who they are.”
Ah yes, harkening back to that seminal moment when Jesus
gave His disciples the pivotal instruction to, “Live your own truth,
boys.” You could certainly be excused if
you see a bit of contradiction in Pavlovitz admonishing Christians not to
determine what is right for someone else, while he himself judgmentally condemns
Christians for supporting Trump because of all the “wrong things” it teaches their
children.
Further, I think it’s important for Christians to turn to
Scripture for their moral grounding, not the meanderings of an ear-tickling huckster
who concludes that since man and woman were made in God’s image, “God is by nature transgender.” Seriously,
he wrote that.
In this era, as every era, the instruction for Christians is clear:
“Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”
If we do so in what we teach our children, how we vote and
engage the public square, and in what counsel and instruction we heed
personally, we’ll be in good hands. Whether or not either John Pavlovitz or
Donald Trump approve.