Many distractions in this life can take a person away from their true path. Even as I put these words together, I think about everything unrelated to my writing. I think about my career and need to find work that gets me out of being constantly underemployed. I find myself looking around the coffee shop where I write. I watch other people talking. I wonder about their lives, and why they seem to have figured out something I have not. Sometimes my mind goes back to my history of making historically bad decisions. I think about my bills, my kids, past partners, my family and all the ways I generally feel sorry for myself. All the while good work needs to be done. In my own understanding, God's work needs to be done, yet this world's distractions and temptations keep me far from the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ.
As I consider the temptations in my own life, I realize that the current leadership of the evangelical church in America — which is my own religious background — has fallen prey to the temptations offered by Donald Trump. These temptations are eerily similar to the temptations the devil offered Jesus in the desert, before Jesus began his ministry.
For those of you who do not know this story, which is told most famously in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the desert to fast for 40 days and prepare himself to do his work. At this time, Satan comes to him, offering the same three temptations, at least as Christians understand it, that can pull anyone and everyone off their true path. They are the same temptations Trump has offered to the evangelical movement, with the difference being that the evangelical movement has chosen to follow Trump as he leads them away from God and closer to the path set forth by the devil himself.
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The first temptation was the offer of turning stones into bread. Jesus would have been starving by that time, but his famous reply was that man does not live on bread alone. I must admit that the thought of having more money — more bread, both literally and metaphorically — is as powerful to me as to anyone else. I want to provide more for my daughters, and every time I have to explain to them why I can't afford something, it breaks my heart. Yet I also understand money has the potential to take me down a dangerous path, away from my true calling as a teacher and counselor.
Trump has offered the evangelical church a lot of bread, and the possibility to live the way he does. There are........