He begins every one of his
sermons with the same prayer, the opening line of which is “this is my Bible, I
am what it says I am…”
I think he intends this
statement to be positive and uplifting, but the thing is, the Bible’s
assessment of the human race really isn’t that flattering. It clearly says that
we are all sinners, who are enemies of God and spiritually dead as a result of
our sin.
An argument that is still
commonly used against Christianity is that this is just not the case. It’s,
like, so mean! Deep down all people are good!
I now present exhibit A,
Donald J Trump as president elect.
The whole situation is truly
shocking. If we need any evidence that the biblical assessment of our nature
may be correct, we need look no further than the number of votes he received,
the bullying and belittling of the people who cast these votes, and the hate
crimes and riots that have resulted.
But there is something in this
situation that I find even more shocking.
There are already several world
leaders, Jong-un, al-Assad, Mugabe, to name a few, who have committed and
continue to commit hideous human rights violations. Every day one person dies
every four seconds as a result of starvation, many of these children. There are
over two billion people in the world who are struggling to survive on less than
two dollars a day.
But no, a Trump presidency,
that’s the defining mark of a messed up world.
Why is it that we are so upset
about Trump, yet not at all concerned about any of these other terrible facts,
or the hundreds more I could name?
Because a Trump presidency
might negatively impact us in little old New Zealand. My children are not in
danger of starving to death, our social welfare system means they will never be
expected to survive on two dollars a day, and Jong-un isn’t going to come over and
condemn me to death by firing squad for using Facebook. But Trump might affect
us, and, if we’re honest with ourselves, that is the only reason we actually care.
Because the Bible is so right,
“there is no one righteous, not even one.”
We are selfish. We are looking out for number one. We are horrible.
I’m reading a great Stephen
King book at the moment. It contains a classic section of dialogue where the
good guys are giving themselves a pep talk before their final winner takes all
encounter with the bad guy. Neither of the good guys are feeling particularly
brave, and they are trying to establish if bravery really is the opposite of
fear. The conclusion they come to is that it isn’t bravery, but honesty and
belief that drive fear away.
Trump has instilled fear in to
the hearts of many, let’s see if we can’t employ these principals to rectify
that.
First, honesty. If we’re
honest, the world is already a horrible place. The only reason we find a Trump presidency
so scary is that it means the horrors of the world might now affect us as well
as billions of faceless strangers we can so easily cast to the back of our
minds.
Feeling better yet? No? Well
let’s try belief…
This is a slightly trickier,
as we all believe different things. I guess you can take your pick from ‘God is
in control and it will all be ok in the end’ or ‘we are just one big cosmic
accident and in the end we all just die so none of it matters anyway.’ Whichever
sits better with you.
But a belief I think we can
all agree on is this. Yes, our world may be broken, but there is some good left
in it worth fighting for, and we can all do our part to make it better.
And this is the challenge I
will leave you with dear reader, what are you, with your education and your
resources and your disposable income, doing to make it better?
And don’t sit there thinking, well
I can’t be expected to do anything about Kim Jung-un, because there is plenty
of work that needs doing right here in your own back yard.
One in three children in New
Zealand are living in poverty. What are you doing about it?
More than 40,000 of us are
homeless. What are you doing about it?
Because, the thing is, if all
your doing is sitting on your phone panicking about how Trump might affect your
mortgage rates, yet doing absolutely nothing to help your fellow man who is
panicking about how he will feed his children this week…
How much better than Trump are
you actually?
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