In praise of “God’s Man”

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Guest Contributor: Dana Hall McCain – This article originally appeared on AL.com

God’s Man had a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, last week, wherein he cursed God twice in a matter of minutes. But do not sweat it because that’s OK now. The church has refashioned herself to accommodate God’s Man, so taking the Lord’s name in vain doesn’t require a rebuke or even a double take these days.

What a relief!

I call him God’s Man because that’s what so many of my Evangelical friends have told me he is. To be honest, I pushed back on that designation for some time, because my Christian upbringing and study of scripture had foolishly led me to believe that God’s Man would somehow reflect the character of God: wisdom, righteousness, etc. Not a perfect guy, necessarily, but one who at least had the clarity to recognize that he’s a sinner in need of grace.

But the devotion of my Christian peers has convinced me that they must be right. Only God’s Man could persist in brazen sin, and convince 80 percent of the church to tacitly approve of it with their stone cold silence.

He’s gotta be the real deal.

I naively thought that there were these certain lines in the sand—like taking the name of God Almighty in vain, with no remorse or shame—that would cause Christians to fear the Lord more than they feared Democrats. But as it turns out, Democrats are far more powerful and more to be feared than the maker of heaven and earth, and thus we should just be grateful that God’s Man is willing to captain our team.

Some of my Christian friends weren’t ready to crown the President as God’s Man right out of the gate. They called him the Lesser of Two Evils when they voted for him in 2016. But as time has gone on, they’ve realized that by bending the knee to this new king, they can get political power and Supreme Court justices. It’s just like when Daniel was serving in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, and was presented with two unsavory options: eat the king’s unclean food to secure his place of safety and proximity to power, or refuse and suffer the consequences. Because he was a political realist, Daniel chose the Lesser of Two Evils and ate the king’s food and…wait a minute…that’s not how it went down, is it?

Bad example. Let me try again.

Maybe 2016 was like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who really had no choice but to bow down to the idol because if they didn’t they were guaranteed death (HILLARY!), so they bowed down and avoided the fiery furnace/Democrat president and that’s how God was glorified…right?

Tell you what—let’s forget the Book of Daniel, because it’s full of people who couldn’t possibly understand the pressure we’re under here in 21st-century America. Sure, they refused to move the goalposts for a king who could exterminate them at any moment, and tried to. But we have real problems.

And because we have far more significant problems, we cannot afford the luxury of calling sin by its name, or rebuking an unrepentant sinner with whom we’ve publicly aligned ourselves, or doing anything that might weaken God’s Man politically. Because his political success is where our hope lies. He gets our loyalty and praise, because of the power of his office.

Now if the God he cursed had any real power, that would be a different story. But we’re sophisticated enough to know that all the power that matters is in Washington, DC. We’re not a bunch of yahoos who believe that God can accomplish his purposes without God’s Man. I mean, have you even heard how tough God’s Man can talk?

So when moments like the Greenville rally happen, we need to keep our mouths shut about two little g*ddamns. We can’t afford to weaken the real king in service to our old one. Our old one has nothing to offer. He can’t even vote.

Author’s Note: Look up the word satire before composing your reader email. It will save us both some time.

 

Dana Hall McCain writes about faith, culture and politics for AL.com. Follow her on Twitter @dhmccain for thoughts on these topics and more.