A couple of days ago a dear friend sent me a link to a sermon titled “The Continental Divide” by a Texas pastor named Tommy Nelson. I think he’s a committed Christian, and I paid him the compliment of listening to most of what he had to say. (I got through about 40 minutes of a 58-minute presentation.)
I sat in front of the computer madly scribbling down his points, planning to discuss them one at a time in this post. But the longer I listened the more I realized that his points could be boiled down to a few very simple ideas. I’m going to list and then briefly analyze them when necessary. Some statements need no explanation:
1. An ignorant population will get what they deserve.
2. You don’t vote merely for a candidate but for a party platform. Later on Nelson says, and I think this is an accurate quotation, the Republication party “delivered to [Trump] the responsibility to protect the platform.”
This is true, in a sense. But the fact of the matter is, while the Republican platform has many excellent ideas in it, Trump and his advisers had no part in writing it. The platform is purely advisory; there is no mechanism to force an elected official to carry it out.
3. Trump is guilty merely of “bad language.”
4. “We could all have egg on our faces in the coming years . . . I am praying for Mike Pence to guide him in the civilities of politics.”
How’s that been going?
And, finally, what James Dobson and other pro-Trump evangelicals have been saying (Nelson doesn’t seem to know, by the way, that Wayne Grudem retracted his support of Trump):
5. “Donald Trump is scary because of the fear of the unknown. Hillary Clinton is scary because of the fear of the known.”
Do those statements ring a bell? They should. Those are the very arguments that have been used to justify voting for Clinton. Yes, we know what agenda she will push. She is a known quantity. She can be intelligently opposed. But a President Trump is . . . unknowable. Let’s go ahead and throw him against the wall anyway and see what sticks! Maybe it will all be okay! Maybe he’ll change into a completely different person on Nov. 9 if we elect him! Anything’s possible!
Yes, and the sun may rise in the west tomorrow.