MAGA and The Softball

Thoughts on the Perspicuity of Scripture

When the Trump administration commits the attrocities that it does in the name of Jesus, you would think the response from a critical, liberal culture would be something like, “See! We warned you about the dangers of religion! Look what happens when you follow the Bible.”

But this is not how the secular culture is responding to MAGA. Much more consistently, people are pointing out the hypocrisy of the MAGA movement: “Wait, isn’t this the opposite of what the Bible teaches?”¹

What is remarkable to me is that the more fundamentalist Christian culture has taken up a medeival catholic (and slightly postmodern) take on the Bible: “Only the Church can read and rightly interpret the Bible. Who are they to tell us what the Bible says?”

What is also remarkable is that the liberal left culture has essentially taken up Martin Luther’s doctrine of the Perspicuity (Clarity) of Scripture: “Isn’t the Bible pretty clear that we should love the poor and the marginalized?”

As perplexing as this phenomenon is, it is not foreign to the patterns of history. Over the centuries, the Bible-experts have consistently been educated about their own book by those on the outside:

1. The disciples (and then the Gentile church) had to speak against the well-versed Pharisees and Torah-Experts.

2. Slave-Masters had to obscure Scripture and reading from their slaves for precisely this reason; the Scripture is not ambiguous about slavery. Frederick Douglass’ appendix to his Narrative Life of a Slave is case in point.

3. Ghandi famously expressed his confusion regarding British Christians’ hypocritical treatment of Indians: “I like your Christ, but not your Christians.”

And now, friends, the world at large looks at the MAGA movement and unknowingly champions the Perspicuity of Scripture.

The Bible is not unclear or indifferent in its condemnation of a movement in which, simply in the past few weeks, the following has happened:

1. Trump posted an AI video of a jungle where Michelle and Barak Obama’s faces appear on the bodies of guerillas.

   

2. Trump calls Somalis “garbage” and says he does not want them in our country. Noem says this about Haitians:

   

3. The administration called two Americans who were shot dead in the street by federal ICE agents a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin.”

This of course is only three among many, many examples just from a week of data.²

Yes, liberals have become the Bible thumpers. Rightfully so. This is not persecution; it is more like a reckoning. Children understand and are perplexed by the hypocrisy of the Trump administration, which claims to be the political force on the side of the One who loved the marginilized and who commands us to love our neighbor and our enemy.

So yes, the heathens are preaching to the choir in our cultural moment, and it is an opportunity. My prayer is that Christians take this opportunity to champion the teaching of Jesus. Millions of skeptics in our culture are actually seeing the beauty of Jesus as he contrasts the present administration.

God is throwing us a softball, as it were. Let’s hit it out of the park.

1. Knives Out 3 made just this point. This perspective likewise comes from countless conversations with my progressive liberal Portland neighbors and friends who have left the faith.

2. Not to mention Trump’s antagonization of NATO and Ukraine, obsession to acquire Greenland, RFK’s ruin of vaccines, the stop the steal movement and January 6th, the Stormy Daniels affair and its coverup, Epstein, the Access Hollywood tape, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth’s blatant Christian nationalism, the Kennedy Center, the mockery of Rob Reiner after his brutal murder, the racist mockery of latino politicians, the insulting of women reporters, the mockery of the handicapped, his claim that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, the pulling of millions of foreign aid from the world’s most vulnerable, the continuous calling of democrats and political opponents “scum” and “garbage”, and on and on and on.