To the Editor:
As I ponder the blatant, blood-thirsty seditious coup attempt Jan. 6, 2021, at the nation’s Capitol by professed righteous rioters – brainwashed by the big lie about a stolen election and given cover by proclaimed “pro-life” legislators – I think of this quote from Hunter S. Thompson’s “Rum Diary:” “Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a god and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one.”
Clearly, millions of Americans, Christians included, have been programmed over the decades to champion as their idol a political party “that claims a god” but then exhaustively acts like one doesn’t exist – or that it could give a rat’s tail about God’s agenda.
Increasingly unsettling revelations from ongoing Jan. 6 hearings of Republicans’ complicity in the deadly Capitol attack are just the last example of that.
Even in the wake of what many fellow Evangelicals describe as a “wake-up call” from the Creator these past six years filled with hateful vitriol, baseless incites, relentless fearmongering, endless lies, unfathomable contagion deaths, racial injustice unrest, and spiking lethal violence, many folks still aren’t picking up what God has been putting down.
Of course, when you hand the most powerful position in the world to a lifetime grifter, who cloaks himself in Christianity but possesses all the character traits of an anti-Christ, things aren’t going to turn out rosy. That’s just the way it works.
It’s the most basic of lessons. If you hang out with the wrong crowd and bad actors and give deference to what Psalm 1 describes as the “ungodly” and “scornful,” you’re playing with fire.
Scripture from the Old Testament prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs up through the New Testament Gospels is chock full of instruction to depart from evil and recognize blatant deception when it rears its ugly head.
Jesus Christ in Matthew commanded his Apostles “do not be deceived” as he sent them out among “wolves in sheep’s clothing” to share the gospel. Jesus warned his disciples to be as “wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.”
How does excusing, tolerating, or even endorsing the seditious and violent actions of Jan. 6 comport with God’s word? It doesn’t.
Will we as a nation answer that blaring wake-up call before God simply hangs up?
Ever since that Hollywood cowboy Ronald Reagan rode into the White House on his high horse, declaiming big government, espousing “trickle-down economics” that bolstered the monied, but trickled out before lifting the people, we’ve been on a slippery slope towards tyranny.
And if twice-impeached ex-President Donald Trump, whose fingerprints are all over the seditious Jan. 6 attempted coup, were somehow allowed to finagle his way out of culpability again, it will be just a matter of time before this nation goes full-blown authoritarian.
Republicans emboldened by the big lie are pushing more than 400 pieces of legislation across the country to suppress the minority vote. GOP lawmakers in extreme cases insist a woman impregnated through rape or incest give birth. But once that precious newborn breathes its first breath, it’s time to lift itself up by the bootstraps and get a job.
Maybe it’s time we pursued a policy that earnestly cares for “the least of these” as Jesus commanded.
It is written in Isaiah 10:1-2, (NASB):
“Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob the poor of my people of their rights, so that widows may be their spoil and that they may plunder the orphans.”
– Kevin McKinney, Court House
