By LEE BALLARD
Special to the Daily Planet
Mark Sanford is running for president against Donald Trump. They’ll slam each other in the campaign, but they’re of one mind about “vessel theology.”
Remember when Sanford was governor of South Carolina in 2009? Remember how he disappeared for several days and how his staff said he was walking the Appalachian Trail, while he was fooling around Argentina?
There’s a tiny detail in that episode you won’t remember. It’s the relevant part for today.
There were calls for Sanford’s resignation, of course. Adultery is a big deal to most of his constituents. But he didn’t resign. He held a meeting to explain things to government staff.
“King David fell mightily,” the governor began. “He fell in very significant ways but was able to pick up the pieces.”
Why did he bring up the David and Bathsheba story? Why? Precedent. David did bad things, Sanford is saying, like I did…and God didn’t remove him! God had more great work for David to do — like he has more work for me to do. Me and David.
What we’re looking at here is a bit of special-purpose theology. It says that God sometimes chooses people who are “imperfect (or, flawed) vessels” to carry out his will on earth. In principle, I believe that’s true — but it can also be used conveniently by religious leaders to excuse ungodly behavior, especially sexual behavior, by people they support.
There’s another Old Testament character who’s a flawed vessel like David: Cyrus, king of Persia in the 8th Century B.C., who conquered Babylon while the Jews were in captivity there.
He released the Jews to go home and rebuild the Jerusalem temple. He was indeed a heathen king who helped God’s people. He even gets his own prophecy, where he’s called by name, Isaiah 44:28 (God talking): “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’”
The David and Cyrus analogies are ready-made for Donald Trump. He’s the perfect imperfect vessel. And evangelical leaders have seized on it. David is precedent for God’s choosing an adulterer, and Cyrus is precedent for an ungodly man accomplishing God’s will, specifically for America.
My question here is this: Of all politicians, why Trump? He makes them take huge theological leaps to defend their support for him. How is he worth it?
In an interview with Dallas pastor and TV preacher Robert Jeffress in Texas Monthly magazine last August, Jeffress answers the question with candor. “We’re in a war here between good and evil,” he says. “And to me, the president’s tone, his demeanor, just aren’t issues I choose to get involved with.”
An important word here is “war.” For decades, evangelicals have felt harassed by their government and squeezed by America’s growing secularism and multiculturalism. They have endured: no prayer in schools (1963), Roe v. Wade (1973), no displays of the Ten Commandments (1980), gay marriage (2015), IRS slap-downs, on and on.
They deeply believe that America is a Christian nation, period. And their war is about national restoration. It’s a spiritual war fought on a political battlefield. They want friendly courts that will set right the wrongs of the past. And they want a Cyrus to help them in their war. Trump is their man. He is God’s man.
Pastor Jeffers was candid about it: “I don’t want some meek and mild leader or someone who’s going to turn the other cheek. I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”
Evangelical leaders aren’t looking for democratic, constitutional solutions. They want decrees. They want proclamations by courts and by a strong president.
Democracy hasn’t worked for them. Maybe autocracy will.
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Lee Ballard, who lives in Mars Hill, has a website at Mountainsnail.com.
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