This is not the Christianity I knew while growing up

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2026/05/this-is-not-christianity-i-knew-while.html

Most Evangelicals believe that all parts of the Bible are equally inspired, which undermines the Christian gospel and leads to the kind of literalist fundamentalism that has produced the pseudo-Christian nationalism that has led Evangelical churches into apostasy. But what they call liberal is actually the Christian gospel that was revealed in the teaching and preaching of Jesus, beginning with the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. It's actually a lifestyle, not merely a legalistic intellectual assent to a set of doctrines.

The Christian gospel is the interpretive criterion for every other part of the Bible. And there isn't even full agreement on what actually constitutes "the Bible." Understanding it requires knowing what its 40 different authors intended to convey to their original audiences, and understanding that the circumstances to which that meaning applied are long gone and no longer exist. In Christian doctrine, the gospel as revealed by Jesus is where the values and principles that establish the practice of the faith are found.

Human existence is considered sacred. In Christian theology, humans are created in the image of God, a reflection of divine existence, and supported by Jesus' stating that the greatest commandment consists of two concepts. One is true worship of God. The other is that the evidence of being a Christian is seen in those who love their "neighbor," their fellow human beings, as they love themselves.

What this means is that almost everything I was taught, and believe to be Christian is completely inconsistent with the rhetoric of conservative Evangelicalism into which political ideology incompatible with Christian principles has intruded. If the Christian gospel is a system of life-enhancing values and principles, lived out as love for one's neighbor, defined by Jesus as any other human being, then it is impossible to call any war "just."

It is also not possible to claim that God's spiritual annointing is on a leader whose lifestyle shows zero consistency with any principle of the Christian gospel. Old Testament leadership examples do not apply, since there is no longer any nation which exists as a theocracy under the direct control of religious leadership. And while there are historical examples of "flawed men" God appeared to use in achieving his ends in governing ancient Israel, they also demonstrated full spiritual conviction when it came to their flawed character, depending on God for forgiveness. That's not what we see in the American political leadership misled conservative Evangelicals accord to their political idol.

The idea that an unrepentant, morally bankrupt, narcissistic, convicted felon and adulterer would be chosen by God as a political leader would have been considered absolute heresy by the people in that small town church in which I grew up, if that idea had surfaced back in the 70's. Now? It's hard to say. At any rate, such an idea is inconsistent with authentic Christian faith and practice, which is built on a foundation of grace.