We know that slaveholders in the American South used Scripture to justify keeping their fellow humans in bondage. They could find no words from Christ on this, for there are no words from him. Just a line in the New Testament from mere mortals presuming to speak for him.
But perhaps it made those who tore apart families, who whipped insubordinates until they passed out, who sold children and cotton bales as similar commodities feel better to know that the monstrous crime of their daily enterprise could be a blessed act.
These days, no less an authority than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said recently that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president.”
She offered no sourcing for this assertion, as is the case for vaporous claims that rise from the rot of the Trump presidency on a daily basis. But in blaming God for Trump, Sanders echoed a widespread Republican belief that the most outwardly amoral man ever to occupy the White House is an instrument of divine power. He’s part of the master plan.
Mocking Sanders and the many Ned Flanders of the G.O.P. team is unlikely to make much of a dent. Nearly half of all Republicans believe God wanted Trump to win the election. To them, secular snark is a merit badge on the MAGA hat.
But there is a better way to sway the electorate of faith, as the rising Democratic stars Pete Buttigieg and Stacey Abrams have shown us. They apply something like a “What Would Jesus Do?” test to rouse religious conscience on the political battlefield.
Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar, married to a junior high school teacher. He’s gay and, more surprising for a modern Democrat, he is an out Christian, as quick to quote St. Augustine as Abraham Lincoln. On Sunday, he is expected to formally announce his run for president.
Partisan Identity is More Important to Those with an Existing Identity
Minorities do not consider the Republican party more religious (22 min)
Most white people don’t identify strongly as Italian. They identified as Methodist or Baptists, but now that religion is less important, political partisanship matters more.
Minorities aren’t looking to political identity for their identity.
Ep 333: Drew Dyck Disciplines Himself
If you become disciplined to pursue a self-interested, bad goal, what does that gain you.
If you think the right things, truth, it will transform their character. But why is it some of the most theologically smart people are A-holes.
Things that Deplete your Willpower:
Decision making, Conflict, Sleep
Flee temptation. If you are always relying on willpower, you will fail.
This is where habits are important
- Pick one thing. Don’t try to do 5 New Year’s Resolutions at once
- You can’t delete Bad Habits, only replace them
- Cue, Routine, Payoff
- Replace social media with Bible reading
- Jesus take the wheel
- Someone says that they will not brush their teeth unless they felt called by the spirit
- Grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning.
- Sanctification is often a slow transformation process.
- I am what’s wrong with the world: G.K. Chesterton
- In the long run, self-discipline is about delayed-gratification. It is easier in the long run.
Evangelicals and the 5 Stages of Grief: (30 min)
We are between anger and bargaining and this Trump Faustian bargain was out of desperation over demographic change.
Sociologists refer to the Driver’s license -> Marriage License Gap
Fewer people are coming back to the church because the gap is longer and people figure out how to live without it.
Reinforce Republican identity and threat, not from Satan or poverty, or oppression, but an enemy of Democrats
- Us vs them, mitigating our fears in the amygdala
- If fear is a big part of your life, you are not living as a Christian
- I am not a fearvangelica
- A lot of people believe that being afraid makes them Godly
- It is very hard to convince someone who is marinating in fear that they don’t need to fear.
- Phil’s Idea: inside out with fearful evangelicals