What Would Jesus Do?

To the editor:

It is not unusual for many Christian Nationalists to regularly quote the Bible to defend their political views. Many of the passages they cite come from the Old Testament, which in the King James version contains many beautiful songs and poems and inspiring parables. The Old Testament also describes a god who doesn’t hesitate to destroy large populations of people, including children, who have offended him.

In the Old Testament we also find lengthy descriptions of harsh and detailed laws about food, holy days, sex, and punishment. The penalties prescribed for disobeying those ancient laws are severe, even lethal. Most modern Christians ignore these rules, or strive to reinterpret them.

These same Christian Nationalists will call for posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms to lead wayward children toward righteousness (forget the First Amendment). Yet, these selfproclaimed lovers of the Bible and Jesus do not hesitate to call Democrats evil traitors, to describe immigrants in sweeping and dehumanizing terms, and to argue for joining their particular and narrow variety of Christianity with the federal government.

They want an ultra-conservative Christian theocracy to rule the United States. However, history shows that theocratic governments produce a loss of freedom and a decline in education. Fortunately our Constitution prohibits that disaster.

The Christian Nationalists express a hateful contempt for Presidents Obama and Biden while offering seemingly unlimited cult-like adoration for an extraordinarily corrupt and incompetent President Donald Trump. The obvious hypocrisy of the contradiction between their professed Christian beliefs and such hateful language about certain groups of people, their fellow Americans, and others, seems to escape them.

A strong opposition to any kind of abortion, at any point after conception, even to save a mother’s life, is an especially strong issue with ultra-conservative Christians. The irony is that this group is also typically opposed to social safety-net programs that provide shelter, nutrition, health care, and child care. Such programs are denounced as socialism. As one journalist commented, “prolife” should be called “probirth.” Once the child is born, the mother and her baby are their own.

The Synoptic Gospels give a clear picture of whom Jesus asks his followers to care for. The Sermon on the Mount teaches that a moral life requires more than simply following religious rules. Jesus praises humility, mercy, compassion, peacemaking, and a desire for justice. He condemns hatred, hypocrisy, greed, revenge, and self-righteous judgment.

Jesus urges His followers to help the poor, accept the stranger, and treat others as they wish to be treated. Jesus emphasizes that character and intentions matter more than outward behavior. He concludes that true wisdom means not merely talking about these principles, but living by them.

Perhaps those folks so eager for a theocracy, and for the Ten Commandments to be posted in public schools, should consider posting the Sermon On The Mount in their own places of worship for their own edification.

It is not required that one must be a formal, self-identified Christian to want to honor these principles that foster a healthy, and just society. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, one who believes in a divine Creator, but believes the Creator had then set the universe to run on natural law without the need for divine intervention. Jefferson was a scholar of the Enlightenment and valued empirical, scientific evidence. He rejected what he called myth and superstition.

However, President Jefferson was a great admirer of the historical Jesus. He modified his copy of the New Testament, cutting out what he considered to be violations of natural law, but keeping those parts of the gospels that focused on Jesus’s comments about how people should treat one another.

These sayings of Jesus that define ethical values are common in most religious belief systems, as well as among many non-religious people.

One would hope that among the self-proclaimed Christian faithful the words of Jesus would foster humility, compassion, and care for the stranger and one’s neighbor. That expectation is obviously not demonstrated by some in their letters to the Record.

Often we find some writers to this opinion page using religious language to paint large numbers of their fellow Americans (mostly Democrats) as evil, and to promote a blanket condemnation of illegal immigrants, casting them as mostly rapists and murderers, rather than desperately poor people trying to find safety, food, and shelter.

Strong laws to protect the border must be enforced, but it is not necessary to lose our humanity in that process.

Political disagreement is not treason. Democrats are not evil and do not advocate for open borders and voting rights for illegal immigrants. All illegal Immigrants are human beings, not criminal stereotypes.

Ironically, the same folks who pat themselves on the back for being such true believers, warriors against evil, will, beyond reason, express blind loyalty to a deranged, incompetent, and corrupt president, as well as voting for deeply flawed candidates at the state level who share the president’s cruel and autocratic policies.

Then it becomes reasonable to question whether these champions of the cloth ever wonder what Jesus would think about it all.