Can you be MAGA and Christian?
A serious question about Jesus and all governments
Dear H,
One of the toughest things about being a Christian is trying to be a citizen. No — scratch that. I mean trying to be a good citizen.
Paul was a citizen too, but I don’t think he cared a bit about the Roman Empire. He gave the impression that if the Gauls invaded tomorrow he would just shrug his shoulders and try to baptize them too. And although he was the polar opposite of Thomas Paine in almost every respect, he shared that one annoying and almost liberal quality: that he didn’t view himself a citizen of any country in particular, but a citizen of the world. Except Paine’s world was too small for Paul. Paul viewed himself as the child of the king of the universe.
Governments were thus always too narrow and short-sighted for a really religious man like Paul. Even ethnicity and race got the boot when it came down to it. But to be a good citizen requires a whole set of priorities and principles at odds with the whole gist of Christianity, and if you take both seriously, it tends to put you in a state of cognitive dissonance.
For instance, the first priority of government is what all Americans would today call “racism,” but which is the foundational preoccupation with being any organization at all. And that is saying, “we are like this, and because you are like that, you stay over there.” This is the idea behind all borders, motherlands, and voter ID: the fact that zero identity means zero stability, zero safety, and zero power — the antithesis of all political doings. To have a government totally unconcerned with “us” and “them” would be a contradiction in terms; and a scatterbrained majority can be easily upset and conquered by a small, tight-knit, and organized minority. And in fact that’s what we see happening in all “democratic” governments today. Whether it’s Big Pharma, Black Lives Matter, or billionaire philanthropaths opening the borders, the dedicated cabal with a synchronized step and well-defined goals is always going to run things — until the other groups get organized and fight back.
The second priority of all governments is running things along the lines of what we call “common sense” — the antithesis of the whole Christian vibe. This means we don’t believe in “do not judge” — we hire judges. It means we don’t follow along with “do not worry.” We fight about a budget. Israel is the first and last country to follow a pillar of fire aimlessly through the desert and eat manna off the floor: a government defines its goals and fights over them because a government without goals is about to be replaced by another government.
A government can’t tell if you’re actually “saved.” A good government cares whether your neighborhood looks like hell; and if you don’t listen to what they say and you resist arrest, they’re okay with sending you there personally. A government doesn’t just give, like Jesus Christ and John the Baptist told us to do. And if it does, a government takes from somebody else first. And none of this “he who does not work shall not eat.” A government eats even if nothing inside the government works. And in fact, the worse a government works, the starker contrast exists between those who eat and those who don’t.
Finally, the third priority of all governments is what we call "treachery.” And this means that when you’re not a part of the government, and you’re not a part of the citizenry, and you’re clearly opposed to the main goals of the government, whoo boy, you’d better watch out. Because a government that loves its enemies does not exist.
If a government has an enemy it does not go the extra mile — unless it’s in the form of a Trojan horse. If a government has an enemy it only turns the other cheek when it’s forced to. A government doesn’t cast its pearls before swine because a smart government doesn’t tell anybody, especially in war, the whole truth. Its job is to fool the enemy so that nobody knows what it’s really up to; and even in most democratic governments, I think we can agree that this is how they have to treat the citizenry. And this is because all governments are a giant backroom deal. To spill the beans about all your plans is to invite not only criticism, but opposition. It means to lose your advantage of not just mystery, but surprise: two things fatal to any enterprising government. Even when they’re good.
If an enemy country has a resource, you oftentimes try to take it. If an enemy country has a plan, you try to foil it. If they have secrets, you try to steal them. If they have soldiers, you may eventually have to try to kill them. You can make peace with an enemy nation and maybe even an ally — but only until you don’t need them, and only if you hate somebody worse. In fact, treachery is so hardwired into the spirit of government that we view people on our team with these traits as heroes — and the man who tries to ban them, say, the saint with a “citizen of the world” mentality, is most usually viewed, by even women and children, as a coward, a loser, and a traitor. Because he kinda is.
Put these things up against Christianity and, quite frankly, you’re left with a big question: can any man be a good citizen and a good Christian? Is it possible to have a Christian government at all — even in theory? Or is Christianity a movement antithetical to all law and order? In other words, in order to “love your neighbor,” do you have to throw away the neighborhood?
My answer to this is that Christendom isn’t a movement: it’s a moment. It’s that second when you realize God really loves you and so you fall in love with God and do something crazy — and beautiful. Kinda like what God does for you.
Christians are the salt of the earth — not the main dish. Christianity is thus the flavor, and not the meal itself. When people say they want a Christian government they don’t know what they’re asking. They’re asking for that moment, where you’re free in the soul, and feeling wild and gracious, to be put into a regimen and forced on other people — whether those people feel it in that moment or not.
You — yourself — can be truly Christian in moments. You can give your money to the poor and turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. You can take the lowest place and bless those who curse you and even put yourself on a cross. But the second we cross from a Christian moment to a Christian government we don’t get Christ at all. We get The Devil. What we get is you, a person overflowing with spiritual abundance (or maybe the opposite), forcing other people to throw themselves away too. And we have many terms for that. We call it stealing, or tyranny, or slavery, or murder. The very things that government was designed to protect us from.
My belief — and who knows? Maybe I’m wrong — is that you can’t love your neighbor if you ruin his country**. And the second you switch from giving yourself away to giving your neighbor away, you’re not being Christian at all. You’re being a sanctimonious jerk and a lunatic.
We thus have no way to really synchronize Christianity and government**. But I don't believe we were meant to. As Thomas Paine put it, government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence. It’s a tool for living in a broken world by using broken means. And love has always been controversial, because loving somebody always means ignoring or fighting somebody else.
Thankfully God knows what we’re up against. What we need to pray for is wisdom to choose, at moments, which path to take — and just in case we make the wrong choice at the wrong time, to pray for forgiveness. Because we're all going to need it.
Yours,
-J
P.S. This essay was written because this week Trump let 49 Afrikaners into the country and the left-wing is pissed. How can you, a Christian, support such racism? they say. How can you throw out the Mexicans next door and fly in some honkies from the other side of the globe? The Episcopal Church even went so far as to sever ties with the US refugee resettlement program, because they (quote) have “a longstanding commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”
What these critics forget to mention is that all refugee resettlement programs are discriminatory. You might even say they’re racist. We never had room for all the world’s refugees, and we have always left the majority outside. The difference is, now we’re picking someone to come into the border, instead of having other countries pick for us. That and we picked the “wrong race.”
What the Episcopalians screwed up here is their “woman at the well” moment. In other words, somebody they look down on asked them for help and they didn’t want to help simply because they looked down on them. Even if the Afrikaners are racist — which, by the way, has anybody bothered to ask them? — isn’t this an opportunity to “not judge”? Isn’t this a great chance to bless your enemies instead of cursing them? Isn’t this that time to overlook the five divorces, and lend a hand to somebody who’s scared for their lives?
Yes, and that’s why the Episcopalians are ridiculous. They want to help everyone the Republicans don’t want — and that’s how they define “the least of these.” When it comes to whoever it is they don’t want, they have a license, like everybody else, to leave them out in the cold.
*Ayn Rand once said, The only way to help the poor is to not be one of them.
**Despite all I said above, it would be a mistake to say that Jesus is apolitical. You can quote Him, of course, saying give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. You can bring up that passage where two brothers are fighting over an inheritance, and Jesus — who claims to be in charge of everything — tells them to take it to a judge. You can quote Paul saying that it doesn't matter if your nation is occupied — just obey the conqueror. Or that it doesn't matter if there’s slavery: just be a good slave — or funnier yet, be a good Christian slave-owner. If you can point to these passages you can say that God doesn’t care about the systems you live in: He cares about how you live in them. But this just isn’t entirely true either.
Christianity isn’t a Christian nation, or a social movement. It’s God reaching out and touching a single person at a time. But Christianity is inherently political, because Christianity is social — and Christian individuals eventually have to be involved in politics. The more people feel God’s light, the more they shine on things around them. These things can be businesses or families or governments, but they are always touched by us, changed by us, blessed by us — and only if we’re asking God to work through us.
Thus I would say a Christian-influenced country is honest, but not naive; it's just, but not cruel. It's merciful, but not lawless. It's gracious, and helpful, but not to the lazy, and not at crippling expense to the unwilling. It's fair, but not with an equality that robs the worthy, or an envy that tears down the successful. It's quick to listen, and slow to anger. It makes war, but only in the pursuit of peace. And it has these qualities not because of a system, but because of the individuals within the system.
Anywhere someone is speaking to God and being led by him, any system improves, because a system is always run by people. To look for “a Christian nation” is crazy. To look for Christian influence in a nation, you just have to be a Christian and go work for the nation. Like charity, Christian government is something you have to do yourself — or encourage the Christians you personally know to chase after. The moment we make it a system or a movement, we lose it.
We are the light. We — the individuals touched by God — can’t expect it out of a platform. We are the candles at the dinner table; but even fire has its place. A Christian nationalist — of either the left*** or the right — wants to light the dining room on fire. A smart Christian is a fireman: he has the fire extinguisher ready, in case the flames catch on in the wrong place, and threaten to burn the whole building down.
***My wife asked me an important question. Can a leftist be a Christian nationalist?
Absolutely.
A Christian nationalist, in my book, is anyone who tries to make his nation reflect the commandments of Christ — and, insofar as possible, to enforce it by law. In the case of the Christian right, they focus on his holiness, and try to outlaw adultery, pornography, abortion, peddling smut to little kids, and occasionally selling booze on Sundays. They're tough on drugs, big fans of “he who does not work shall not eat,” and don’t like importing foreigners from other religions. Thus the gist of the Christian right is usually negative. The goals are also largely possible.
A Christian leftist, on the other hand, tries to take the infinite compassion of Christianity and turn it into a legal matter. He thus believes in forcing you to care for and even promote “the woman at the well” — single moms and layabouts and freaks in general. He welds your gates open for the foreigner and the stranger, provides food and medical care for the poor, and loosens standards widely in an attempt to show God’s open arms to everybody. They're big fans of “he who is first shall be last,” and especially “he who is last shall be first” — even if the downtrodden are just people who drove themselves into a ditch.
Thus the gist of the Christian leftist is usually positive — unless you’re the person he’s taking from to make it all happen. If the words of Jesus are true, that the poor you will have with you always — the goals are also extremely expensive, because they're also technically impossible. We can’t turn every loser into a winner, and we have yet to see Joe Biden pull bread out of his own ass, or cure any lepers with his shadow.
Here’s where I diverge with many on the right and the left. I believe both of these people can be Christians, because Christianity exists precisely because people are idiots.
A man's contract with Jesus Christ is personal, and has varying implications. Contact with God always changes a man, but you never know quite when or how. It might turn you from adultery, but it doesn't guarantee you’ll prosecute adulterers. It might make you speak kindly, but it doesn't guarantee any particular position on "hate speech." It makes you more open to strangers, and more generous, but it doesn't mean you'll have a common sense policy on the border. Christianity is for jerks and morons in recovery: not a plan to make everybody spotless or a genius. Thus Christians will always have to fight each other over these issues — and in the end, we’ll all shake hands and apologize for where we went wrong.
But noses will have to be bloodied before then.