“We pray that you will impart wisdom to our president as he goes forth to stand in our place. We ask that those who stand against him be put to silence. That those horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down. When we leave this place, give us the courage to say no to evil. Give us the courage to stand with President Trump in the caucuses and the election to come. We ask for your guidance, wisdom and power. In Jesus’s almighty and all-powerful name, amen.” – Pastor Joshua Graber of the Cornerstone Baptist Church.
Okay talking to your imaginary friends not withstanding, anyone who does this clearly hasn’t read their own handbook. Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus does the opposite of that.
Reminds me of an article I saw recently of an Evangelical preacher - apparently there are non-insane ones - who was despairing because he read the literal Sermon on the Mount only for someone from his congregation to come up to him afterwards and ask him, “where did you get all those liberal talking points?” When the preacher explained that that was the literal teachings of Jesus Christ, said idiot replied to the effect of, “yeah but that’s weakness; obsolete in this day and age.”
There’s a reason I call these people “Christians,” with the air quotes.
Exactly, jesus wouldn’t say something like that or this:
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
The politics of American Christianity was the first major cause of my leaving Christianity. I spent my teenage years outside the US, didn’t have regular church service, and read the gospel furiously, over and over. When I came back to the US, it was obvious to me that I hadn’t read about the same Jesus they had.