A question to and about the evangelical rights support of trump

That's not an excuse for ignoring Trump's immoral behavior.

It's been a year. There were years BEFORE the election.

Why are we seeing evangelicals accepting Trump's immorality right now? Where are the statements against the racism, the sexual behavior, the abject, in-your-face lying when just a cursory look verifies it's a lie?

The worst possibility honest evangelicals face is NOT Clinton - it is Pence. And, that's only if Trump is so bad that he would get impeached by a Republican House and a Republican Senate!!!


Frankly, this Clinton thing is a cheap excuse and NOTHING more.

 

I just noticed Spooky's remarks above. She captures it well. A politician is, after all, someone we hire to do a job. When we want a job done, we choose the person who we think will do the job best, and our religion isn't a factor. If you needed work done on your car, and you were a devout Christian, would you choose the devout Christian mechanic who was a poor mechanic, or would you choose the non-believing mechanic who was an excellent mechanic? See the analogy?

 

Not really. Our kids all grew up together, playing in our adjoining yards and in each other's houses. We exchange pleasantries and news about our now grown kids and grandkids. They look after our pets when we're gone on vacation. When my son was wounded in Iraq, and we had been notified but we didn't know for sure if he was going to live or die, they came over and sat with us and comforted us. We always exchange Christmas gifts from our family to theirs and from theirs to ours. They are committed liberals/progressives, but they are good people. They've been great neighbors over all these years.

 

Again, I don't agree, as this isn't an election.

Evangelicals aren't objecting to the behavior of the American president when there is NOTHING at stake.

And, moral leadership IS a serious thing - as even evangelicals admit.

 

Well, if you read my posts then you know I am not an evangelical, but I think I understand them.

What I have been saying is that I think evangelicals voted for the agenda they most agreed with between Clinton and Trump. It is worthwhile to think of an election as a hiring process. We, the people, are hiring someone to do a job. The method of hiring is an election.

Now if you're a devout Christian, and you want to hire a mechanic, do you hire a Christian mechanic who is a poor mechanic, or do you hire a non-believing mechanic who is an excellent mechanic? What if the Christian mechanic is an excellent mechanic, and the non-believing mechanic is a poor mechanic?

In either case, does religion matter? Don't you just hire the best mechanic ... regardless?

Nobody is "excusing" anything. Evangelicals were given two choices, and they chose whoever they thought best represented their agenda. I think this pretty clear and unambiguous.

 

Will, forget the evangelical thing for a moment.

We were given two choices. Neither choice was a paragon of personal morality. Neither one. So whether you're religious or you're not, you could not vote for either one on that basis. You voted for the agenda.

Both sides knew what they were getting if their candidate won, so they voted for an agenda.

Bottom line right there.

 

You put on your big boy pants and vote your moral compass. I did not vote for Clinton because I felt her moral code was not mine and I did not vote for Trump because he was equally toxic.

 

I'm pointing out that the election is past. Christians don't have to fear Clinton anymore.

Yet, they have shown zero backbone at a time when doing so is SAFE.

Paul was executed for speaking his Christian beliefs.

Evangelicals today can't post criticism of Trump morality when it is anonymous and couldn't even cause a change of party in the white house - even if Republicans impeached their own president.


How cheap does it have to get before an evangelical of today would hazard a comment concerning morals??

I want to know.

This is NOT about Clinton. It is not about elections.

This is about evangelical Christians today all across America.

 

The bottom line is if they can't express their morality today, then suggesting morality had anything to do with their election decision is total BS.

If they can't comment on "morality" we're seeing today ...

... then they don't have any.

 

Look ... Sometimes I cringe at Trump. I'm sure evangelicals do too.

But I could make a list of things he has done or supported in this first year of his administration that I agree with. One of the things you have to admit is that Trump is trying to do the things he said he would try to do.

So, while I may cringe at some of his antics, meanwhile, he is doing the things I hired him to do. My guess is that evangelicals are on the same track.

The man is 71 years old. He is what he is, and he is not likely to change much at this stage of his life. So I'm not sure what exactly you think evangelicals should do. Those that hired him knew what they were getting, and he is carrying out the agenda they hired him to carry out.

And even though I know you would love to keep the subject off of Hillary Clinton, I can smell hypocrisy and partisanship a mile away. Democrats and liberals did nothing and said nothing to address her abject immorality. Not ever. Instead, they covered for it and excused it endlessly and without the slightest care.

So you will just have to excuse me if "you point at the sliver in your neighbor's eye while you have a log in your own." It just doesn't ring sincere to me.

So ....

 

Oh yes I got it. thanks.

I'll only say if you were a devout christian and the best mechanic was a flaming married gay man, I bet you'd go to the poor mechanic every time. Selective morality is EXACTLY what we are talking about. I understand the process, I was questioning the weighing of two in making a political decision. Apparently what would jesus do does not apply in assessing the nature of the world they wish to see by selecting a political ideology regardless the character and nature of the man in charge. IN this specific case a sinning charlatan.


Remove religion from the discussion and it becomes a discussion of situational ethics. And that is the slipperiest of slopes.
I suppose such decisions, conscious or not, are just some of the stuff of life we all experience. I just never realized that situational morality amongst the devout was as necessary as well.

 

Well, I do not think there is justification for situational morality in their own personal lives. If a devout person has a moral code, they should live by it. We all should, for that matter.

But they have no control over Trump's personal morality. Would they like someone in office whose morality was unquestionable - someone as clean as the driven snow? Sure they would. I suppose we all would.

But that is not a choice they were given. None of us were. We were, however, given the choice of distinctly different agendas, and so we made our choice based upon those agendas. And, I think that's what evangelicals did too.

 

Is most definitely situational morality since morality becomes SECONDARY to other earthly pursuits (politics and its social ijempacts). I had always thought it was the opposite, since evangelicals use the morality of their godliness to repeatedly argue in support their 'right" to discriminate on the grounds of religious freedom and as the definitive measure of demonization in others for simply and plainly going about their own earthly pursuits.

 

Well, I don't think they are always right about everything. I think there are contradictions between certain aspects of their faith (as they interpret them) and the reality of the world as I see it. For these and other reasons, my own early religious training didn't stick with me. There's plenty I disagree with them on. I question some of the basic tenets of their faith. I am skeptical of almost all of it.

But I think they have has as much right as anyone to participate in the political process. I don't think it is contradictory for them to vote for someone who has obvious flaws, especially when the only two real candidates who are offered both have obvious flaws in their characters. In my own case, and I suspect in the case of evangelicals who support Trump, I didn't hire the man to be my moral guide. I hired him to run the executive branch of my government and to carry out a specific agenda.

In the political debates that go on here on PF, sometimes people like to harken back to the days of the Bill Clinton presidency - a time of relative peace and prosperity. But he was no moral guide, was he? No, he wasn't. Well neither is Trump, and I don't think he is asking the country to accept him as one either. What I see is a man with an agenda, not a spiritual guru. I'm OK with that. I suspect a lot of evangelicals see it the same way.

So if, in your opinion, evangelicals are not criticizing Trump for his flaws with sufficient zeal, it is probably because he is fulfilling his stated agenda, and they never hired him to be their moral guide in the first place.

Look ... Did you vote for Hillary Clinton in the general? Did you want her to win and enact her agenda? Did you want her to be your moral guide? And just how robustly do you think the most moral Democrats there are ... would have shamed her and criticized her for her moral unfitness? You and I both know the answer to that, don't we?

Seth

 

Despite lefty propaganda, most Christians arent interested in a theocracy, and puritanicalism died out a long time ago. Trump is no more a sinner than anyone else. You should really stop complaining about Christians not mixing religion and politics as much as you think they should be to better fit in your tidy little box of stereotyping. Reality is far more complicated than that.

 

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT ... THIS IS A RAID


'YES, JONSA -ONE SUBVERSIVE ...


WHAT'S THIS ?

'GAY BOYS IN BONDAGE' ?"






Oh you are definately going to hell, now.




...

 

That's your choice as a voter.

I will always vote to have a say in who gets elected whether they are christians or not. As long as what they do will have an impact in my life I will vote for the one I think will have the better impact.

Christian or not. Standing on some moral high ground is great but doesn't change anything.

Voting does.

 

That’s what the people who voted in Hitler thought as well.

 

During the Republican primaries, there were candidates who were a damn sight more moral than Trump. Why didn't you vote for them? They were against abortion. Had Republican values. I mean be honest. You didn't like them because they were boring. Trump excited you. He shouted about Mexicans being criminals and Muslims being terrorists. He kept saying lock her up lock her up. You had a choice of Republican candidates and ignored those with decency and chose the one who is a very immoral, wicked man because he appealed to all your prejudices and was entertaining. Saying you had no choice is BS.

 

Um, they were politicians so moral and politician are mutually exclusive.

 

We're not in an election.

The topic here is about evangelicals and their quest for more moral behavior.

And, I see that effort as being pegged at zero today.

 

What nonsense. You're trying to use religion to erode support for Trump's presidency. You all have tried everything else including magic spells. All you progressives who claim to be atheists, and spirits and magic and the supernatural don't exist, were using magic spells to somehow oust him as president. Compared to Hillary, Trump's a choir boy. And God doesn't give a crap about politics. But you keep praying for Trumps demise - in about 7 years he'll be ousted from the white House.

 

No I voted for Bush not Clinton and you all keep telling us Obama deported more illegals than Trump has. You had a president who had sex in the Oval office with an intern, while his wife and his minions dragged the names of his accusers through the mud, and cheated the Haitian out of millions that they needed to rebuild after the earth quake. Yes the word is hypocrite and you wear it well.

 

I don't agree. We CAN have an affect on the acceptance of Trump's morality as being considered acceptable by America.

We ALL have that choice - just as much as we have over ANY other specific issue.

In order to actually have that effect, we would have to be willing to say something about it. If it is relegated to being a personal secret, then we're just accepting it.

Somehow we may not see that as an overriding issue in the voting booth.

But, we don't live in voting booths. We live in the public.

 

I don't vote based on morals, I vote based on political issues that will affect me the most and Trump had the best plan for those.

Why do you think Christians must do everything based on some moral code?

I am not electing him to be my moral coach, I am electing him to do a political job.

Like I said before, I don't take my car to the most moral mechanic to get fixed, I take it to the best mechanic.