Words Mean Stuff: Trump, Hillary and Jesus

Last updated on: May 4, 2016 at 7:09 am by Anne Kennedy

Words Mean Stuff: Trump, Hillary and Jesus 2016-05-04T07:09:11-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I didn’t go to bed or wake up wanting to think about politics any more ever again. This election cycle, which isn’t even in full gear, bests the horror of that Bush-Gore wretchedness so long ago. I was young and in love back then, and I remember thinking, ‘if they don’t pull their lives together and just count those wretched votes, I’m going to come unglued.’ All these years later, the only thing left for me, and I guess for the American public, is resignation.

I like to observe and chuckle over the convergence and juxtaposition of trends and events. Sometimes two seemingly unrelated circumstances, happening at the same moment, allow you a glimpse into a realm you might not have known existed. This mortal coil unveils itself even when it doesn’t intend to. We like to think we’re a lot more self controlled than we are. This last year of the rise of Trumpism has been a festivus of such cultural observation for me. There is so much being revealed about the human person, that I knew was true, or was pretty sure about, that we haven’t had to face in quite a long time.

For example, ideas really do have consequences. You couldn’t, two hundred years or so ago, knock the legs out from under the gospel, and expect anybody to believe it any more a century later. I had to read so many old, boring, tired books in seminary, explaining to me that the Word of God (occasionally known as the bible) is not understandable, wasn’t written in any divinely inspired sense, is neither sure, inerrant, authoritative, nor true, but is worth my time as an interesting text to inspire good clean living–a jumble of contradictory propositions if ever there was one–that had Jesus not already rescued me from the mire, and helpful people forced me to see the logical errors of post modern Jesus Seminar foolishness, I would not have emerged with intact faith. Even so, I didn’t make it out unscathed. It took some years of putting all the words back in order, and discovering that God is truly alive in the pages for real, to return to the sanity of a believing mind. But at least I escaped with my faith, praise God. That’s not true for several generations of “Christian” leaders and the congregations they now “serve”.

Want to know why there’s no “evangelical” core voting block this time round? Because the words of scripture have been for decades and decades undermine and assaulted. Not only do worshippers in main line churches not trust the bible to be sufficient to know God, neither any more do ordinary Americans filling up the soft padded chairs of so many heresy infested mega congregations found in every corner. The person who believes that words have meaning and that God’s word is sufficient (that means enough) is in a tiny minority. That fact has revealed itself to matter, abundantly, over the last eight years.

Do words have real meaning? We’d like not to think so. It doesn’t matter what any one politician says. It matters who he is…unless it doesn’t matter. I know so and so is good and is going to do what I want him to do, even though what he says is like the shimmering, scattered light of a broken rainbow. It dances around and changes and reflects whatever it has bounced off of in that moment. Words don’t matter, any more. We can say whatever we like. Unless we misspeak or make a newly minted taboo joke on Twitter, in which case we can be fired from our jobs and cast out into Sheol.

Out of the heart the mouth speaks. Really. You can hide it for a while but eventually what you really think and feel is going to bubble up from between your lips. And out of the abundance of the heart does the person vote. And so in the US we have chosen a man who says whatever he wants according to the moment that he is in, and a woman who strategically and compulsively lies to advance herself and her money making opportunities. And why shouldn’t we vote for them, if indeed language itself is malleable, deconstruct-able, formed and shaped by the vagaries of human vanity.

I am always so charmed when I consider Jesus, the unchangeable Word. So sure and certain and true is he, that his power holds the cosmos together. Even though we do our level best to tear it apart and cut it to bits and empty out any possible meaning, we can never change or destroy the Word of God himself. Whatever we say, however we vote, we cannot destroy the underlying truth of Jesus that is the foundation of reality. I say this as a comfort, as a hope. Wether Trump or Hillary, God is God, and his words never fade or change or perish.

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