Disturbing images
The images I saw yesterday afternoon were jarring, unsettling, disturbing …
An American flag with the name TRUMP superimposed, equating allegiance to the nation to allegiance to one man.
A hybrid flag, half stars and stripes, half southern cross, equating the ideology of these United States with the ideology of the Confederacy, namely the fundamental right of citizens to own human beings of African origin as personal property.
A full Confederate flag paraded through the capitol building, emblematic of a longing for the ascendancy of white supremacy.
Even more upsetting for me were the signs: one sign mounted on the windshield of an automobile reading “Pelosi is Satan,” and a large yellow sign held aloft reading simply “JESUS SAVES.” But this “protest” was billed as a “March for Trump” and a “March to Save America,” meaning that these signs conflate believing in Jesus with believing in Trump, that Trump’s mission is to be America’s “savior,” that the debate, the struggle, is not between Republican and Democrat, between left or right, even between fundamentally different visions of governance, but between darkness and light, between devotees of the devil and the servants of God and their savior, namely Donald J. Trump.
I can believe that Proud Boys and white supremacists and Q-Anon disciples would want to gather at the capitol at the president’s bidding to disrupt the business of our democracy, to promulgate the lie of a stolen election, to foment rebellion, but I had friends there. Forty-year friends, dedicated followers of Jesus, had traveled half a country to be there Wednesday, to be there because …?
This was not a Right to Life March. This was not a march for peace. This was not a march for religious liberty. This was not a march for any cause, but for a man, a “March for Trump,” a show of solidarity to bolster his claim that he actually won the election.
Why be there? Why be there as a Christian? Why be there for no other reason than that one man, one man alone, testifies that the election result is a lie. There are no “two sides to the argument,” absolutely no evidence at all of a level of fraud that overturned the election, only the word of one man whose ego cannot bear losing. Why be there for him, at his bidding, trusting only his word?
We are called to be there for Jesus, to do his bidding, to trust his word, not to give this kind of unquestioning allegiance to a man. Jesus saves. Jesus saves and no man may claim that mantle for himself. May Jesus save us from this time of confusion and cooption and carelessness, when our Christian witness, our witness to the empowering and freeing and healing love of Christ, has been compromised by our readiness to believe the lies of and pledge our allegiance to a self-serving charlatan.