Evangelical support for Trump “hurting their witness”

When I was in college I remember receiving some advice from someone much older than me at the Southern Baptist church I was attending at the time. The subject of our conversation was whether or not the use of alcohol and the visiting of bars and nightclubs where it was being rather heavily consumed was appropriate behavior for a young Christian to be engaged in.

The advice went something like this. Although the use of alcohol is not expressly prohibited in the Bible, you need to consider the fact that indulging in it (especially to excess) is seen by most people as an ungodly practice. When a professing Christian engages in such behavior, potential converts may look at that Christian and conclude that they are no different than anyone else.

As a result, that unsaved person may be less likely to listen to what you had to say if you ever tried to share the faith with them. They referred to this phenomenon “hurting your witness,” and if you’re an evangelical Christian for whom winning other souls for Christ is one of the most important things you can do in life that is not something you ever want to do.

I won’t say how successful I was in following that advice as a young man, but it certainly made an impression that has stuck with me all these years. And it is something that has come back to me when I see a significant number of people who refer to themselves as evangelical Christians giving enthusiastic, full-throated public support to a man like Donald Trump.

If you’ve read the first four books of the New Testament or even heard second-hand about the life and death of Jesus Christ you should have a pretty good idea of what the ideal demeanor should be for someone trying to live a Christian lifestyle. And if you pay attention to the news or read the tweets from our current President, you know that his character is as far from being Christ-like as night is from day.

Above all, Jesus personified unconditional love. He showed special compassion for those who his society at the time despised – the sick, the poor, women who had been shamed because of their sexuality, and members of despised ethnic groups. He warned the rich man that love of God and love of money were incompatible, and when they came to put him on the cross he forbade his followers from responding with violence.

And then we have Trump. This is a man who has voraciously pursued material wealth all his life, habitually cheats on his wives, and treats anyone who crosses him in any manner with aggressive contempt.

Far from personifying unconditional love, Trump instead personifies the seven deadly sins. Go ahead and go down the list – pride, envy, greed, wrath, sloth, gluttony and lust. He checks all those boxes, and then some. And keep in mind that this is a man who said he has never felt the need to ask God for forgiveness for anything he has done.

And yet because he’s a Republican and hews to the right politically he not only won the evangelical Christian vote handily he has been heralded by some in the evangelical community (such as Billy Graham’s son Franklin) as God’s choice to lead America in these troubled times.

Someone like Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, who upheld strong Christian values and behavior both as president and afterward as a private citizen is despised by many of these same folks because his politics fell too far to the left of the political spectrum.

Somewhere along the way evangelical Christianity became wedded to right-wing politics, and as a result anyone whose political beliefs fall on the left or middle part of the political spectrum are made to feel unwelcome in their club. It has gone far beyond hurting their witness to these people, they have completely destroyed their credibility and the message of the gospel has been rendered unrecognizable as a result.

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Evangelical support for Trump “hurting their witness”."