Have a larger post on my faith journey coming later. But saw this today and wanted to save my thoughts.
Not familiar with this source but just…the whole idea here that he’s working extra now to make sure…hate that part of Christianity. Like the whole vibe is just perverse. Humans are not perfect. We will make mistakes. A benevolent deity as claimed would respect the intent and attempt more than the method (or absence) of kissing up.
And yes, forgiveness exists. But there’s a huge strain in evangelicalism in the USA (and also a lot of Catholics) that basically says that being Born Again is all that matters (they tend to tie it up in how that makes you not sin anymore but obviously that’ not the case) or alternately that there’s a sort of scale balancing where you can be an absolute monster for decades but fix it all with a massive burst of effort at the end when the hourglass gets low.
I don’t want to argue that people cannot have epiphanies of “wow i should probably fix the damage i caused” but i think the part that rubs me wrong here is that Trump is clearly doing it out of fear, AND he’s basically missing the point.
He seems to be trying to do a bunch of things that help people based on his understanding. And begrudgingly I will grant that even as unlikely as it is that the Gaza ceasefire holds, the fact it happened and allowd hostage release and food and medicine to get in is pretty clearly of benefit. But Trump is doing/attempting big public goods that help people who he has no connection or prior interaction to. And he’s clearly doing it for legacy reasons, and the threat of a divine panopticon and judgment, not because it’s the right thing to do to others. And he’s not going back and trying to help the people he has personally hurt, or fix the problems he personally caused, or even admit he did that. And admitting fault feels like a necessary step.
It’s a child’s understanding of Santa, that “Do enough good things visibly and I’ll get rewarded” more than true faith of being kind and living a good life.
But if you need the promise of reward and/or threat of punishment to respect the dignity of others, are you really good, or just greedy or afraid?