A Funny Thing Happened on Thom Hartmann's Radio Show
Progressive journalist and radio show host, Thom Hartmann, thought he'd dodged a bullet when he skirted a listener's question whether Donald Trump is the Antichrist. Then his switchboard was flooded with others asking the very same question.
That first caller clearly hit a nerve.It’s a fascinating question, however, whether put literally or metaphorically.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
Hartmann is reluctant to call Trump the Antichrist. He sees plenty of evidence, however, that Trump is an Antichrist. For evidence, Hartmann relies on the Sermon on the Mount.
Finally, they thought, they could ask him, straight up, the question that had been haunting them, particularly now that the Roman authorities were starting to talk about punishing or even executing them: How they could be sure to hang out with him in the afterlife?
Jesus told them that at the end of days he’d be sitting on his throne separating the sheep from the goats “as a shepherd divideth.”
The nations of “sheep” would go with him to heaven, the “goats” to hell.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me food,” he told his disciples he would say to the sheep. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
At this point, his disciples — who had never, ever seen Jesus hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick or naked — freaked out. Whoa! they shouted. We’re screwed!
“When saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” they asked, panicked. “Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“Verily I say unto you,” Jesus replied, reassuring them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells his disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.
Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison.
That’s it.
And it’s a list that is quite literally the opposite of everything that Donald Trump advocates, stands for, and has done in his career.
Hartmann concludes that Trump may not be the Biblical Antichrist but he sure as hell is a political Antichrist.
Sorry Squire; even giving the Great spaghetti monster in the sky even a cameo appearance should not enter our lexicon.
ReplyDeleteUsing religion as a matrix or transcript as to our worldly issues is at the very base of current and past problems and offers few if any solutions.
FFS , Trump empowered the evangelicals , Harper gave it a shot; what did it give us..
To accept religious belief into the conversation is akin to O,Tooles lets accommodate the anti vaxxers!
TB
I think Hartmann was using the "antichrist" in as secular a manner as possible. Yet his callers were not. Americans, like many in other countries, routinely use scripture as their political weather vane.
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