John Rachal's Blog

The Sunday-morning Christians—as opposed to those Christians who live Jesus’s values, or at least attempt to, day by day, hour by hour—seem to have found their paladin, if not their savior, in the form of Donald Trump. It is a mystery to me, unless the explanation is as simple as the sordid possibility that their values are one-inch deep, wearable only on Sunday morning, and wholly divorced from the man on the shores of Galilee whom they say is the model for their lives and whom they worship. It is, for me as an observer, the profoundest disconnect in modern political life, with the possible exception of the former anti-Soviet GOP slithering into a kumbaya embrace with a Russia headed by former KGB chief Putin. Most of us have a gap and sometimes a chasm between what we say and what we do, as well as what we say and what we think. But here is a chasm between what the Trump Gullibles think they think and what they actually think: Thinking they adore and emulate the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount but actually adoring the man who preaches hatred and division.

So who would Jesus vote for? Having himself healed demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, would he vote for the fellow who mocked them? Having blessed the poor in spirit, those who mourned, the meek, those who hungered for righteousness, the pure in heart, the merciful, would he then vote for the guy obsessed with his own grandiosity, self-aggrandizement, fire and fury, and vengeance for all his detractors? Having blessed the peacemakers, would he vote for the man who sows division and hatred? Would he vote for the man who bears false witness as freely as he breathes? Would he vote for the man whose Pride was so titanic that he proclaimed that only he could fix it, that he was the chosen one? Whose Wrath was such that he called one political enemy a monster, and said that others should be indicted and sent to jail? Whose Avarice is so embedded in his withered and twisted character that gaudy, ostentatious wealth is his paramount measure of success? Would Jesus vote for someone who could not even imagine that his indefatigable pursuit of wealth would, like the camel not going through the needle’s eye, prevent his salvation? Whose Lust and self-veneration are such that he felt entitled to manhandle women? Whose Envy of far better men, like John McCain or Barack Obama, lays bare his own rotted core? Whose Gluttony for power and wealth blind him to any vision of kindness, generosity, empathy, humility, sacrifice, duty, honor, stoicism, or character? Would Jesus, thinking of the good Samaritan, vote for a bully? Would he vote for a man whose entire adult life has been devoted to dishonesty, manipulation, acquisition, conquest, and cheating, all to lay up his treasures here on earth? Would he, remembering Micah 6:8, support the person who, in his dealings with others, does not do justice but perverts it? Who scorns mercy? Who most certainly does not walk humbly with his God? Who decries the mote in his brother’s eye, but refuses to see the beam in his own? Who never stoops to do for others what he demands others do for him?

Or would Jesus vote for the other guy, flawed to be sure, but standing on higher ground, seeking more the common good rather than singly his personal good?

Admiration for the Nazarene is not the sole province of the religious. In that light, I, who am not religious, ask not just What Would Jesus Do, but whom would he vote for?