This article is directed especially to people who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ. In an article last month I warned against what I called the “tar baby” effect of Donald Trump’s candidacy for President of the United States. A short time ago, in the context of a Trump Campaign effort to woo the support of well-known Christians, Dr. James Dobson reported that Mr. Trump is now a different kind of baby, a “baby Christian”:
The other day news broke that somebody told James Dobson that Donald Trump finally found Jesus. After much ridicule, Dobson is now walking it back. Dobson now says he does not know for sure and, more importantly, he claims that the person who supposedly led Donald Trump to the Lord is noted prosperity gospel heretic Paula White.
I caution my readers against taking the word “heretic,” as used in the article just quoted, as a casual pejorative. I viewed a video in which Paula White agrees with an interlocutor who proclaims that “Jesus Christ is not the only begotten Son of God.” This directly contradicts one of the most famous verses in Scripture which begins: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Of course, a preacher like Paula White, who enthusiastically applauds the notion that “poverty is a curse” and worldly wealth is God’s reward for one’s profession of faith in Christ, would be just the one to lead billionaire Donald Trump to her lord. But is that the Lord Jesus Christ?
For in his true Gospel, Christ says “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24); and Jesus says to the law abiding young man, whom the Scripture tells us he looked upon with affection, “You lack one thing: go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” And when, on that account, the young man goes away disheartened “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God’” (Mark 10:23).
Later Christ leaves open the possibility that, despite the difficulty, people of wealth may enter the kingdom, since “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” But then he continues, saying “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold, now, in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions.” With persecutions: not glamor, notoriety and the world’s adulation, but persecutions. The Greek word for persecution refers, at its root, to being hunted and pursued like a criminal, or the quarry of a beast of prey.
Thanks to his promotion of Donald Trump, Dr. Dobson has put himself in the position of lending credibility to what appears to be “another gospel, which is not another: except that there are those who are troubling you and perverting the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6-7) Thus, Dr. Dobson find himself exactly where I predicted (in the article linked above) that he and others who associate themselves with Mr. Trump’s candidacy would eventually find themselves:
…Whether he wins or loses Donald Trump’s candidacy is about destroying the rational credibility of the conservative cause, and of all the reputed conservative “leaders” who support him. I call this the “Tar Baby” effect because it involves tarring those he supports with discreditable attitudes or illogical positions that contradict the moral basis for their conservative views or the rational arguments that support them.
By reason of God’s Word, people who call themselves Christians say that “God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him.” But if this is not the truth, what becomes of the logic by which we live, the logic of our true salvation? Few people in the United States are so respected as Dr. Dobson for their commitment to sharing the true Christ, our reason for hope. Yet in the effort to promote Mr. Trump’s presidential ambitions, he has obscured that commitment with a shadow of doubt. If this is the fruit of his association with Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, what can we say of those aspirations? If we speak as Christ directs us, of good fruit and bad, is this consequence the ripening of good fruit, or the serpent striking at the root of good, so that bad fruit may flourish in its stead?
It appears that, in order to accept the Dr. Dobson’s report that Donald Trump is a “baby Christian” we must depart from following God’s Word. We are being told by Mr. Trump’s apologists that, by doing so, we will lift up a champion, pledged to defend our religious liberty. But does this mean once we have abandoned the true Word of God, when that Word is all that makes us, and therefore all that makes us free? For if God’s Word is true He also says: “if therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” Having the treasure of God’s only begotten Son within us, though it be with persecution, no fear drives us to need another champion.
Or so we profess to believe, we who trust in God through Jesus Christ. He is the only child to lead us. He is the Son of Man whose words and example, in the flesh, reveal the way for us to secure the only liberty that matters. Once our nation strove toward being the land of liberty, in that true sense of the term. We did so even when it meant watering fields of battle with our blood. We upheld God’s standard, for God’s sake. What threat is it that has overcome that confidence; what foe? Or is it we ourselves who let it go, for the sake of the mirage of arrogant, prideful wealth and power that Donald Trump’s whole life epitomizes, and which he now pretends to offer us, as a nation, in place of our true greatness.