What Gospel Are They Reading?

I am not a Christian. It is none of my business what people who style themselves "ministers of the Gospel" are teaching the people who choose to follow them. 

When I hear some so-called evangelical speaking passionately about Deuteronomy 22:5 (which forbids women wearing men's garments and vice versa) but totally ignoring Deuteronomy 22:11 (which forbids wearing garments of wool and linen woven together) I may smile about their selective reading of scripture, but it is -- again -- none of my business. When I hear Joel Osteen insisting that God wants me to be rich, or T.D. Jakes saying that poverty is a barrier to living a Christian life, I have to wonder to myself about what happened to their Bibles. Did somebody tear out Matthew 19:24 or Luke 18:24? (Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God), but it is, you know, none of my, etc...

I watched the movie "Come Sunday" on Netflix. It's a true story. The protagonist, Bishop Carlton Pearson of Tulsa, came to doubt that God intended to punish nonbelievers by sending them to Hell for eternity. Bishop Pearson began preaching that the message of the Gospels is that Jesus saved all souls, which he called "the gospel of inclusion." This was ruled a heresy by the Joint College of Bishops, a leading body in African American Pentecostalism and Bishop Pearson lost his congregation. I understand the impetus of so many churchgoers to want to imagine eternal punishment for the sinners around them. If you are trying hard to lead a sanctified life, shouldn't there be some reward? It those sinners are doing whatever they want, shouldn't there be some consequences? Believers fear that nobody will even try to be good if they know they are already redeemed anyway. My reading of the Parable of the Laborers in Matthew 20 supports Bishop Pearson's view. The workers who started first thing in the morning -- the workers who worked faithfully all day long -- complain about receiving the same wages as those who didn't start until late afternoon. The landlord asks them: "Are you envious because I am generous?" And the people who resist Pearson's teaching, demanding Hell for non-believers, remind me of the older son in Luke 15 who angrily reproaches his father for feasting the return of his younger brother, the one who squandered his wealth with prostitutes. But I really have no standing to express an opinion on these question. I am not a Christian. It's none of my business.

So why do I feel the need to express my feelings about Pastor Paula White, President Trump's favorite evangelical? I don't care about the Senate investigation into her finances led by Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Making millions from the donations of credulous believers is a sin, but I am not God. I don't care that she pretends to have a PhD although she never graduated from college: she is self-employed; it's not as if she's lying on an application. Leading evangelicals call her a heretic for preaching against the trinity and for preaching that God rewards us with material wealth and for preaching that we are all Gods. It really does not feel like I should be setting out litmus tests for heresy. That is the responsibility of believers.

But this week she began preaching a whole new story of Jesus, one that is completely unrecognizable to me as coming from the Gospels. This was a week which saw Customs and Border Patrol agents arresting asylum seekers in violation of international law, seizing their children, and losing the paper work that showed which children belonged to which adults. This is an immigration policy I disagree with, this is demonic behavior. To do this you have to either hate children and families, or not believe that these children and families are human. And the supporters of this policy have stated publicly and repeatedly that they do not -- in fact -- believe the refugees on our southern border are human. They have publicly and repeatedly claimed that these refugees are gang members and that they are animals. The hatred American showed for fugitive families, fleeing for their lives from their homes in Central America, resonated powerfully with Christians. They could think of nothing but the Holy Family and their flight into Egypt, fleeing for the life of the infant Jesus from their home in Nazareth (Matthew 2:13).

But somehow Pastor Paula White doesn't find this in the Gospel of Matthew at all. She told CBN News: 

"I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, 'Well, Jesus was a refugee.' Yes, He did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years. But it was not illegal. If He had broken the law then He would have been sinful and He would not have been our Messiah."

I find every part of this astonishing. Jesus was legally proscribed shortly after his birth. All the babies  of Nazareth were ordered to be executed in order to kill Jesus (Matthew 2:16). Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus to Egypt precisely in order to evade the law. It boggles my mind to hear a Christian minister claim that Jesus did not break the law. He violated purity laws regarding corpses, he violated the laws of the Sabbath. He violated the dietary laws saying, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." (Matthew 15:11) I don't know what to think of a Christian minister who somehow doesn't notice that Jesus was executed for breaking the law: He was crucified after a trial and a conviction in the court of Pontius Pilate. All four gospels agree on that. 

But I also don't know what to think about a Christian minister who thinks asylum seekers are criminals. Deuteronomy 10:19 commands: "Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Making room for asylum seekers is not just a religious "suggestion" like "be charitable." It is a matter of US and international law. But there is also scripture here for those who really want to believe in eternal punishment for sinners. There is the "parable" of the sheep and the goats:

He will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’ 

“Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ 

“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41-46)

The words of Jesus are clear. The sinner is not the asylum seeker; the sinner is the one who rejects the asylum seeker, who rejects the stranger.

I am not delusional enough to think that I am the first to have noticed all of this. The Jesuit public intellectual Father James Martin told Anderson Cooper on CNN, "I wonder what Gospel she is reading." He went on to say that he was appalled at the use of the Bible to justify taking kids from their parents. Disciples of Christ minister Reverend Doctor William Barber tweeted: "Those of us who took vows to preach the Gospel can’t do our job in America today w/out helping people distinguish b/w #SlaveholderReligion & the Christianity of Christ."

And that gets me to why I feel that this is my business, why I feel the need to comment, why I had to write this. Everybody is entitled to their personal beliefs. But the belief that God wants us to return people who are fleeing for their lives to the people who would kill them is no longer a personal matter. It abets murder and torture. I say that it is demonic and I mean that as literally as I mean anything.

The belief that God wants us to steal children from their parents and to move them thousands of miles away and erect bureaucratic barriers to their reunification is not a personal matter. It abets atrocity and it is demonic.

The belief that God blesses those who commit these abominations is demonic. The Apostle Paul wrote (from prison, according to tradition, because he, too, was a criminal according to the secular law) that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12) Those principalities and powers are the ones who steal children and confine them in kennels. They offer parents the Sophie's choice of losing their children forever or returning to the countries where those very children's lives were explicitly threatened. Those principalities and powers threaten countries with economic warfare for encouraging moms to breast feed their babies. And those principalities and powers preach the righteousness of all these abominations.

This is not a difference of opinion. It is not a private religious matter. It is not a nuance of a faith tradition to which I don't belong. It is evil. And we are all called to speak out against evil.