The Atlantic Magazine has an article about the love relationship between Evangelical Christians and Donald. Mariner suggests only the strongest in faith and self-confidence read that article.
Reason, a so-named ‘skill’ of Homo sapiens, is not to be trusted. Reason is free to imagine anything, whether reasonable or not. Further, the human success derived from inventions and discovery, while entertaining and imaginative, has not changed the human brain one iota in its 100,000 years of immediate evolution.
Humans first respond to the five senses as all creatures do (one will never put one’s finger in the fire twice); humans then respond to sustained survival (me, my offspring and my belongings come first); finally, humans make the mistake that they can create a reality that fits one’s unique perspective, bending or dismissing empirical reality, existential experience and the core virtues of sympathetic awareness – the last of which is present in all mammals.
Relating to theology and doctrine first, humans toyed with how the universe came to be. In the western world, the earliest documentation of a theology emerged around 7500 BC with the creation of Cybele, the female creator of nature who always had two fierce lions beside her.[1] Cybele may have been the first super hero because of her ability to procreate an entire biosphere. In the rest of the world ancient Egyptians and others applied anthropomorphic values: rocks were gods, trees were gods, the Sun, the Moon, etc. Later, theology allowed males to be gods and also to have more than one god at the same time. The panoply of Greek and Roman gods reads like Downton Abbey.
About 2,000 years ago, a religion emerged that was based on love as its core value. The power of God was love. God created Jesus so people will understand who god is and how they should live accordingly. While proselytizing in Turkey, disciple Paul learned that the local name for this new religion was ‘Christian’. The name stuck.
Until this day there has been confusion about how god relates to individuals or perhaps how individuals relate to god. There is a huge library on this issue, especially on whether god is a personal god (Old Testament) that interjects himself into the daily life of individuals or is a force to which all believers respond (New Testament).
Perhaps the sagest observation was made by theologian Reza Aslan who said, “Humans want a god like themselves.”
A good segue to the second subject, politics. Many Evangelical Christians (ECs) have adopted Donald as a current day savior (for the sake of sanity please don’t correlate Donald to Jesus). Forgetting every verse of faith and decorum in the New Testament, ECs believe Donald will preserve the culture and doctrine that ECs believe. The enemy is the rest of the population who generally are more liberal and Donald’s non-Christian behavior, indeed criminal behavior, is exempted just so he can fight the liberals in the nastiest way possible.
This political circumstance was true for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and all of history’s despots. ECs believe all virtues are dispensable to sustain the EC world. Welcome to Sodom and Gomorrah.
But mariner knows this will begin the decline of the Evangelical Christian. Dare he say God works in mysterious ways?
Ancient Mariner.
[1] See mariner’s post, Cybele, posted April 7 2016