You think God is going to buy that?
Last night, My Faith Votes, the Religious Right effort overseen by Ben Carson that seeks to mobilize millions of Christians to vote in 2016, hosted another teleforum, this one featuring Religious Right activist and pseudo-historian David Barton, who told participants that they will answer to God if they fail to vote for Donald Trump.
Barton ran a pro-Ted Cruz super PAC during the Republican primary, but quicklyshifted his support to Trump once it was clear that he would be the GOP nominee, even going so far as to declare that Trump is obviously “God’s guy” in this election. As such, it came as no surprise to hear Barton tell caller after caller last night that Christians must vote for Trump and will have to answer to God if they don’t.
Barton said that Christians who refuse to support Trump are just looking for “excuses” and would probably have refused to vote for biblical leaders like King David because he was a murderer and adulterer or Noah because “he had trouble with drunkenness” or Lot, who slept with his own daughter.
Oh. Really? So a self-proclaimed “Christian” is saying we should be voting for murderers?
That’s interesting.
Christians who won’t vote for Trump, Barton said, need to realize that “maybe God’s got a different standard than what we do. Maybe at a national leadership level, there are people who do good things for the nation who have character flaws … What God calls great leaders wouldn’t fit your litmus test, but maybe you need to catch up with where God is rather than expecting God to catch up with where you are.”
Oh, excuuuuuuuuuuuse me for thinking that the god that is held up as the touchstone and source of morality might be thought of as disapproving of murder. If Christians are now admitting that their god is all for murder and wants us to vote for murderers, then maybe the pews will really start to empty.
Also, if God does have a different standard (which of course God does, which is one reason we reject God so vehemently), then how does David Barton (or anyone) expect us to know what it is? Conservative Christians do tend to focus more on sex than on harm to others, but even they don’t usually say God thinks murder is okie doke, so I’d love to know how David Barton expects us to figure out what God’s “different standard” is. What do we have to go on? Certainly there’s a lot of goddy murder in the bible, but generations of clerics have insisted that we’re supposed to take all that as a metaphor. What is the source of knowledge of God’s standard? How do we know when we have it right? How do we know what is God’s litmus test as opposed to our litmus test?
“We will stand before God one day and answer for everything we’ve said and thought and done,” he continued. “[God will say,] ‘I gave you your country, what did you do that with?’ ‘Well, I didn’t do anything because I didn’t like any of the candidates.’ Really? You think God is going to buy that? In Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the guy who was given something to do and didn’t do anything with it, he’s the one who got in trouble with the master. He’s going to say, ‘I gave you a vote. What did you do with that vote I gave you?’ ‘Well, I couldn’t use it for anybody.’ And again, we’re back to Matthew 25 and Luke 19 where Jesus turned to him and said, ‘Wait a minute, you didn’t do anything with what I gave you, at all?’ And that is the one who got thrown into outer darkness.”
That’s the weirdest application of the parable of the talents I’ve ever seen.
I think he’s just making it up as he goes along.
Murder, hmmmm. What about the drunken adultery and/or daughter raping? Ok, I’m not so fussed about the drunkenness (under most circumstances), but the adultery and daughter shagging. Adultery? Well, life is complicated I guess and stuff happens; but shagging your daughter, I mean could she even give consent really? Ok, I suppose you could argue that loving consensual sex with your daughter is ok under some circumstances. Besides the little slut was begging for it dressed like that. besides he was drunk, so no foul right? Right?
Morality, it’s so fluid once you start down that slope. Now, about murder…
To think the fundies criticise the rest of us for making paedophilia and bestiality ok because we support gay rights! Projection much?
But I do think Christians really like being told what to do.
Ophelia: Obviously, Barton has a super-secret decoder ring to determine exactly how to interpret God’s wishes. I’m just not sure if he got it from a box of Cracker-Jacks or just pulled it out of his ass. (Maybe both, I suppose–he could’ve swallowed it chugging the caramel popcorn….)
Any literalist would agree God kills people sometimes, and other times orders it done. Fundamentalists do not have a sense of ethics as much as of obedience.
Applying the same standard to theology as he does to history, I see.
Some weird application of talents too; parabolic, hyperbolic or whatever. Carbolic application indicated?
There’s a whole bunch of biblical tropes justifying abusive power. ‘Servants honor your masters’ is just one of these. There are many declarations about accepting oppression and tyranny because…since god chooses the leaders, the bad ones are just punishing us for him. If god really objected to murder, adultery, incest, he wouldn’t have let it be done.
So, if god chooses Trump to be the nominee, Barton’s rock-solid Xtian principled endorsement for Cruz becomes a non-fact. But what if god chooses Clinton to be president? I can hear the gears grinding in that lying head already.