The Protestant response to Trump is that moral character matters for God’s grace to flow through the President and trickle down through the society. The Catholic response (to speak generally) is that the Office of the Church is the conduit for God’s grace, so it doesn’t matter if the officeholder is flawed. Just keep the Office sacred.

We are witnessing a new Protestant Reformation where CT, like Martin Luther, is nailing the moral condemnation of the Pope President on the internet wall. The GOP has become a secular political church with an infallible Pope as president.

The true teaching of Jesus, like Zen, is a question, not an answer, but a question: That’s the truth here? I don’t know, but I’m intensely curious. So I come to God as Not Knowing. I cannot ignore this thorn, this nail, yet I do not flee from the cross where death hangs in waiting. I joyously participate in this question; What is the truth here? Who am I? I don’t know, but I am absolutely, intensely interested. I surrender, Lord. 

In this open question, I make myself ready for Thy grace to flow through me, knowing that it is not I but you who brings knowing to my not knowing. 

In this open question, I hold myself in the open window of wonder at Thy creation and its mystery. As a child, I look with open and clear eyes, for in my surrender the cataracts of the known have been removed. 

In the open question, I release the shackles of time, old age, and death. No longer will I walk head bowed and back bent in the chain gang of political conformity. No longer will I shuffle, nor now I run with unbounded grace. My heart is released from the confusion, doubt, frustration and anger of the imprisoned mind. 

Jesus does not offer the answer, nor does he tell me what to do. Jesus gives me the question. I must do the rest. I do not follow Jesus, I participate in Jesus as Jesus is being Jesus. 

The Cross and the Resurrection is not back in time, a historical event, but this present moment. The Cross is the Question. What is the truth here? I don’t know….I don’t know. What is the answer, Lord?

The Lord said: The question is the answer. The question is the dance.

Here it is Christmas Eve, the moment of darkness before the Christ is born, not in history but now. Jesus Christ is always already about Now, not yesterday. On Christmas, we celebrate the surprise of opening up a wrapped gift What is it? What is it? OH…..Oh….how wonderful. How wonderful. 

Christmas is about opening the heart that is wrapped in time, in the fears of the mind, but now the mind is bright and colorful, and we tear through the bindings of time, through the resistance of the box to open the vulnerable heart of our innocent inner child. 

OH…how wonderful to see the world, my old house, my family fresh as if for the first time. Oh..how wonderful. My heart is the infant Jesus born in the manger of the bare and unadorned moment. 

The Christ, my face before my parents were born.

The magazine created by Billy Graham is questioning the leadership of his son Franklin. Billy Graham created a Great Evangelical Awakening before the internet and televangelists created the electronic church and Jesus as an emotional entertainment, a feeling you get at a rock concert. The old Holy Ghost revival now had a huge electronic tent, and money poured in, making it grow bigger and bigger. Coming to Jesus became to mean belonging to a special salvation club, and membership was sending money. 

This Electronic Club was defined as being God’s hold out against the encroachment of scientific materialism, consumerism, and hedonism, most certainly the domain of Satan, the Bible said. 

When the Evangelicals with their electronic Revivals were invited to join the GOP by Nixon, they brought passion and hope for the redemption of history through a political party, redemption and return to the lost Garden through political action and blind obedience to the party. Obedience and God and Party were conflated. 

Billy Graham’s son Franklin has taken his father’s kingdom farther than Billy ever imagined. But is it the true kingdom? Has Jesus Christ been hijacked? Is Jesus held hostage by a political movement? Will the Republican Party and its president usher in the Kingdom of God? 

Christianity Today questions where the son of Billy Graham has taken Jesus? Can a morally corrupt leader usher in the incorruptible Kingdom? What are the means to that end? Have the means been separated from the end? Has Jesus been crucified again?