C'mon. Stop whitewashing him like the Pharisees. It was not just infidelity. He cheated on all three of his wives! When Melania was pregnant, he was sleeping with porn stars! He is currently facing 91 federal and state criminal violations. He openly bragged about grabbing women by their genitals because he was famous. We know that he liked to go into the dressing room at teen beauty pageants to catch the girls changing. C'mon. If you want to vote for him knock yourself out but Christians should not be in the lying business. It ruins our witness for Christ. If people see you so easily lie about Trump, why in the world would they ever believe you about Christ? Rude? You think mocking the disabled and calling racists good people is just being rude? This is why the apostate church has destroyed any credibility the church once had.
'There was only one choice"Donald Trump in 2016. But, why do so many elites attack this? William Lane Craig said it best"spiritual immaturity. Craig said, "I think there is a kind of immaturity among some people about moral decision-making where they think that moral decision-making is a matter of choosing between the good alternative and the bad alternative. That is a very naïve, almost childish, view of moral decision-making. We are frequently confronted with moral choices in which we have no good alternatives"Intro courses in philosophy or ethics major on this point by presenting moral dilemmas to clarify students' values. For example, a textbook illustration is the runaway streetcar example where if you do not throw the switch the streetcar will hit and kill a man working on the tracks. But if you do throw the switch then the streetcar will kill five people who are on the tracks. So which choice do you make? You don't have a good choice in a case like that. There are two bad outcomes and you have to choose the lesser of two evils. I think the most poignant illustration of this point is Sophie's Choice where the young mother is presented by the Nazi soldiers with a choice as to which of her children will be sent to the death camp and which one she can keep alive. If she refuses to choose one of her two children then both will be sent to the death camps. In a case like this, this poor mother had no good choice. She had to choose the lesser of two evils and pick one of her two children to be exterminated. It is just horrible."' - Capstone Report
What dangerous and moronic comparisons but this is how the NAR dominionist mind works. The choice of voting Democratic is so untenable to them that they must be compared to a fictional story of Nazis forcing a woman to kill one of her children or an out-of-control streetcar killing five people. What these people often miss is that God is sovereign. Do you know what that means folks? That means that if God was so opposed to Joe Biden becoming president in 2020, he could have and would have made sure it did not happen. God uses everything for His glory. He raises up our leaders. This means those that voted for Trump in 2020 were on the wrong side of God - not the right side. What is childish is holding the opinion that one political party must always be chosen and then to try and shoehorn the people of God into this position by lying.
"Progressives at The Gospel Coalition and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention apply a childish moral reasoning in an attempt to exploit the biblically illiterate and show the world (or at least the folks at the Washington Post and New York Times) how authentically Christian they are. Pharisees of old prayed in public. They did alms in front of everyone. Today, Pharisees virtue signal to please the crowds on Twitter, the hordes on Facebook and the elites at the New York Times or Washington Post. However, that isn't a productive way to win elections." - Capstone Report
What absolute garbage. The fact that morality matters to God is not childish - it's biblical. These organizations do not need me to defend them. The morally pathetic position is to demonize everyone who simply has a different opinion than you. To disparage their motivations as if yours is the only piously pure stance. It is not. The report would go on to claim that religious liberty was on the line in 2016 but it was not of course. Unless you mean NAR apostate church liberty. You know, the liberty to deny baking a cake for people or signing their marriage licenses, when those things are your job. Or the consequential freedom for a high school football coach to lead his students, who may or may not believe as he does, in Christian prayer. The report continues:
'The Trump-Clinton election of 2016 highlights this key principle. Politics isn't about perfection. You'll never find the perfect candidate. However, God still wants us to be involved as good citizens. As C.E.B. Cranfield warned, allowing a greater evil because we won't accept a lesser evil is dangerous. A common critique of this view among evangelical elites focuses on how a Christian must refrain from supporting a bad person. How do we reconcile this seeming tension? Graded Absolutism. Christians believe our actions must be governed by God's absolute moral standard. The standard proceeds from his unchanging nature and His expressed commandments, according to philosopher and theologian Norman L. Geisler. Yet, we live in a fallen world where the likes of Stalin and Mao murder millions. Because evil exists there will be times that our moral duties may conflict. The textbook example comes from the life of the heroic Christian Corrie Ten Boom who lied to save the lives of Jews during Nazi occupation of her homeland.
Geisler explains, "graded absolutism holds that our responsibility is to obey the greater commandment, and we are not guilty for not following the lesser conflicting commandment."' - Capstone Report
What??? This is a poisonous theological position that could only be cooked up in the dominionist mind. I want us to properly understand the argument being presented here. Absolutism refers to the belief that moral issues are either absolutely right or absolutely wrong. There is no theological debate to be had that this is how God presents the world to us. Sin is absolutely wrong. Evil is absolutely wrong. Obedience is absolutely right. Even the law is absolutely right. The fact that we cannot adhere to it relates to our sinful nature and not to any fault of God Almighty. The Capstone Report is arguing for graded absolutism, which believes that commandments or law exist in some hierarchical order and we are to obey them sequentially. Look at the last sentence here. They are offering that if we disobey what they deem as a lesser conflicting commandment, in order to obey what they have concluded as a greater commandment then we are somehow absolved from the violation for the lesser disobedience. What a pile of steaming heresy that is! God does not order His law into greater and lesser. The key verse actually reminds us that violating just one aspect of the law makes us a transgressor of all of it! The insidious inference here is that God is somehow in conflict with Himself. Hear me very clearly. There is never an occurrence where one commandment is in conflict with another. If there was, then God would not be perfect, and His law could be easily dismissed as this report is trying to do. The fact that the world has leaders such as Mao or Stalin, Trump or Clinton is absolutely irrelevant to God and to Christians. It does not change God or His law. Remember, the NAR dominionist is not really making Christian arguments. The motivation is entirely carnal because they are supporting a particular political party. They realized however that they could not claim the higher moral ground with Donald Trump, so they changed the rules. Realize the slippery slope they are setting up here. So, the personal immorality is not relevant? What if your chosen candidate then breaks 91 laws? What if they stole nuclear secrets? What if they tried to extort other world leaders? What if they bilked billions of dollars for personal gain? None of it matters if you have pre-ordained that these are somehow "lesser." What if your candidate actually shoots someone on 5th Avenue? Are their policies, which are all promises and no reality, still more important? This is why you do not change God's word or His definitions. Vote for who you like but stop pretending one is any better than the other.
"Applying this to an election is useful. Christians should rank their priorities based on the Bible's teachings. (Pro Tip: Any consistently Christian worldview will rank protecting babies and religious liberty at the top.) Ordinarily, as Christians we shouldn't promote someone with character flaws; however, in the context of an election, Trump's character flaws were far less dangerous than the policies offered by Democrats and the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
