Dear Theophilus

 Dear Theophilus, 

My brother in Christ,
for Christ’s sake,
what on Earth is wrong with you?

I give up.
I should just give up, I guess, trying to change your mind.
I didn’t want to argue with you, my friend, but for Christ’s sake!
You’ve abandoned Christ to join the crucifiers.
The crucifiers must be good Christians, you think --
look at all the crosses they have!
And look at all the converts they’ve nailed to them.

We had avoided confronting each other and I meant to refrain from arguing with you about “mere politics” but, for Christ’s sake!

I hear you declare your support for Trump.
I hear you proclaim your belief in his innocence and in his ability to lead and protect the country.
How can you dare associate the name “Trump” with that of Jesus?
How can you be so blasphemous?
If you can still listen to this man for even a couple of minutes of his CNN rally, falsely billed as a Town Hall, and feel that this utter human disgrace is a man your god chose to achieve the Master Plan, then your god is not mine, because your god is made in the image of the monsters in your brain, a miserable product of your fear and shame, an agent of your own paranoia and intolerance.

And I know it’s not just Trump, it’s not really Trump.
Trump thinks it’s Trump, but it’s not Trump.
Trump is only a tumor, a foul odor, a creeping corruption, and so forth. A symptom of the spiritual disease, the mental disorder, that rots the hearts and brains of certain religious folk who long for an authoritarian big daddy who will do the thinking for them.

Pat Robertson died a couple of weeks ago, unrepentant. Pat Robertson, the former frontman for this movement did so much damage to our country and to the American evangelical religion, our country seems beyond repair. His toxic gospel of intolerance and fear, threatening everybody with eternal damnation if they took care of their gay children, who said 9/11 was his god’s punishment for homosexuality and abortion. We should neither mourn nor celebrate his passing to the beyond. I can only consider my own legacy and my own complicated relationship with the American evangelical cult, and my complicated relationship with you, Theophilus.

I know I’m not getting through to you, because I know you think I’m not as good a Christian as you because I don’t think the Bible is completely without error and I do think it was written by human beings.
But you blaspheme scripture by worshipping it rather than studying it. You think I’m not as good a Christian as the hate mongers and fear peddlers because I smoke marijuana and I am not sorry I’ve had sex with people I loved but wasn’t married to. Well, that’s too bad.

Trump was anointed by a small group of cynical preachers and businessmen who claim they believe the Bible is without error and claim to believe Christ died for our sins to redeem us all from sin, but their actions show that they are only corrupt capitalists who have faith in nothing but power and money.
The power god and the money god own them and these gods own Donald Trump.
They can’t claim to know what Jesus died for when they refuse to understand what he lived for.

You surrendered your moral consciousness to the delirium dream of an authoritarian ideology that demands absolute belief in an absurd doctrine you cannot understand. Their god is a god of the ashamed and confused, a creation of ashamed and confused souls, and you sold out to it, Theophilus, and I don’t know why and I guess I should give up.

Most of what you say you believe about Trump and his record in office is just false. You say he believes in the Constitution and that he can return America to a mythical past glory, to make it great again rather than to make it good for once. Just by listening to his own words and observing his actions you can see his words are false, if you bothered to see and hear. I don’t know what your sources of information are but they are not good.

Trump’s mismanagement, or refusal to manage, the pandemic crisis is reason enough to condemn his term in office. His irresponsibility is a lesson in why someone who is both incompetent and morally bankrupt should not be put in charge to manage anything at all, let alone a nation.

You praise him as a defender of the Constitution, but his first official act, the Muslim ban, was a blatant attack on the First Amendment — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — or do you always skip over that part to get to the Second Amendment?

You praise him as a man of faith, a follower of Christ, this man who does not follow the biblical injunction to care for the stranger, the immigrant, the poor, but who pledges to build a wall to keep the refugees out and tries to abolish Affordable Health Care while making no effort to replace it with anything at all.

You claim he is loyal to Israel when he abandons the prophets to embrace Netanyahu and other brutal nationalists. What is wrong with you, for Christ’s sake?

You know your opinions on abortion and homosexuality are contrary to mine. I’m sorry you think that men should write laws criminalizing women who need to terminate pregnancy, forcing even girls raped by their fathers to bring their pregnancy to term, to force women who know that childbirth will be hazardous to their health, women who are not only taking their own needs into account, but the needs of any child they might bring out of their bodies and into the world, who are faced with the ultimate existential decision — but you think these women are murderers? You think those politicians should decide their fates?
What is wrong with you, Theophilus, for Christ’s sake?

I’m sorry you believe that your god wants to punish us because we not only tolerate LGBTQ+ folk, but befriend them, work with them, love them, and hang out with them, and try to be their allies in their fight for justice and mercy.
Why do you and the preachers you follow keep forgetting what Ezekiel said about the “sins of Sodom?”
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49)

You believe Trump professes his faith in Jesus Christ and has confessed his sins and asked forgiveness for grabbing women by the pussy, for committing adultery with Stormy Daniels, and paying her off with campaign funds. What? Who told you that he confessed and asked for forgiveness? Whoever told you that is a liar. Listen to Trump’s own words, for Christ’s sake.

Trump is not a man of faith, Trump’s only religion is Donald Trump. I am sorry I don’t know how to reach you on this, Theophilus. I’m sorry I don’t know how to talk to anyone caught up in this cult.

What is wrong with you, for Christ’s sake?

How did you get lost in a fascist cult that claims absolute faith in the Bible, but ignores the prophetic call to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?

Let me make a theological digression:
In the gospels arises the figure of Jesus, who started a free school and taught the same principles of justice and mercy as the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, and who led this student movement to the center of political and religious power, a nonviolent revolution to confront the religious establishment and the agents of empire with a demand for justice.

I refuse to submit to a state religion like the one Trump and his followers want to establish, promoting hypocrisy by enforcing public prayer, censoring books and thought, bullying and terrorizing children whose sexual struggles you do not understand.

I’m writing out of love and a broken heart, Theophilus.
There is a great difference in our judgments between right and wrong and between good and evil and between true and false and now I don’t know how to talk to you.
I’m afraid I never did.
Should I just give up?