This morning I shared the townhall.com link to this letter, and I wanted you to have access to the PDF version. So here it is!
Considering that there are those well-meaning souls among us who insist that Donald Trump is morally unfit to be president I think it’s important to detail why his morality, past and present, are not a concern to thinking Christians who seek a better nation for all people. As was said during the 2016 election, we were electing a president, not a pastor.
I see arguments daily about Trump’s past, the accusations of womanizing, infidelity, multiple marriages, and so forth. If I am involved in any of these conversations I remind others that God has historically used people who don’t measure up to religious standards to accomplish His purpose, mainly because those people have no religious preconceptions and thus see situations more clearly, and thus are “after God’s own heart”.
God is not the inventor of religion. That’s on us. Don’t blame Him for the shortcomings of people who wrap themselves in the comfort of rules and regulations and clear-cut reasons to judge others. “Why doesn’t God [insert act of sweeping change here]??”, they ask. Because God swore off that level of intervention a long, long time ago and then showed us how his design for life works when He walked among us. (For a primer, read the Beatitudes – Matthew 5:3-10. Here’s a helpful page. Incidentally, I agree with St. Gregory of Nyssa’s assessment of the Beatitudes.)
Another aspect most of these objectors overlook is the age factor. Who of us is the same person we were in our youth? Or ten years ago. Or even last year? Age changes us.
In Christianity we understand that who we were and who we are stand starkly opposed to each other because we were once groping in the darkness of sin but now walk in the light and see everything much more clearly. To judge us today on our past behavior is to ignore a vital factor in the equation – that while we may have been a bad person in the past, we are at a fundamental level no longer who we once were. God has given us His grace and we have accepted it and chosen to live our lives by His design rather than making life up as we go and hoping for the best.
No less than Dr. James Dobson has said he believes Donald Trump has had a salvation experience. Dr. Dobson, of all people, should be able to size up someone’s character and not be deceived by slick, practiced personal manipulation. If this is indeed the case, Donald Trump is not the person he was in his younger days and is walking another path.
It has been my personal experience that those arguing against Donald Trump on a “Christian” basis are doing so from either a rigid religious intolerance, or from a condescending atheistic intolerance, judging him by an unrealistic standard that is based in either religious dogma or atheistic hatred for the stupidity of religion. Neither is valid because in both mindsets it is more important to judge from a position of moral superiority than to seek truth.
Please read the letter! It is an important perspective we should understand.
https://www.waynegrudem.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Letter-to-an-Anti-Trump-Christian-Friend.docx
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