What the hell are we thinking?

Disheartening as it may be, this excerpt is from a rather helpful read on the question so many are asking:

Every week, I get letters and emails saying, “I don’t understand how Christians, especially evangelicals, can support Donald Trump. I don’t understand any of this.”

The notes are often tragic — someone was shunned by other churchgoers for being a Democrat, a person questions politics preached from a pulpit and is marginalized by the pastor, or a member slinks away distressed because his friends choose MAGA over the gospel. Often, it is deeply personal — the parents of a gay teen who leave when people in their church joke about or make threats regarding LGBTQ people, a minister who preaches an upsetting sermon gets fired, or someone whose spiritual journey raises issues about justice is ridiculed or disciplined by their community.  

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It isn't about religion...continue here.

-- Diana Butler Bass

It sets a frame to comprehend a bit of the frighteningly 'burn it all down' mentality that has emerged (from another, undelightful, but important-read; you won't believe what this guy is saying…unless you really feel this way, too — not to mention how this preacher reinforces this apocalyptic war-is-better notion):

"Our System Needs to Be Broken, and He Is the Man to Do It"

The notion that somebody might wish for the country’s dismantling would have sounded shocking coming from anybody, but it was especially jarring coming from Johnson.

“I think his policies are going to be good,” he said, “but it’s going to be hard to watch this happen to our country. He’s going to pull it apart.”

“When did you stop believing?” I asked Ted Johnson.

“About when Trump became president,” he answered.

Continue here....

Sometimes, looking back (another helpful, and constructive, piece here), we can see things we couldn't see at the time:

Looking back at my schooling, our whole introduction to history was told in terms of domination. The mighty empires that dominated, the explorers sent out by their home countries to dominate the world. Even my religious background was deeply rooted in the domination story because we Christians believed that our religion should dominate…. Theologically, my understanding of God was that God was the ultimate and universal dominating force. I remember from my youngest age hearing a Bible verse from the New Testament, “Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11). What I pictured is this powerful omnipotent God with sword drawn … demanding you bow your knee. It was this dominating vision of God. In that way, domination was the way the universe was supposed to run.

-- Brian McLaren

But,

When you see cultures based on White supremacy, misogyny, environmental exploitation, consumerism, oppression, and domination, you are actually seeing the fallout from self-centrism. Entire systems, institutions, and societies are fully capable of this sin, as when a group places itself at the center and expects the rest of humanity and creation to support its singular prosperity.

There is no possibility for right relationship if one powerful group protects and sustains itself over and against all others. From there, it’s just too easy to construct binaries and hierarchies of human existence. Our group is good; all of you are bad. Our group belongs on top; we have to keep you low. Our group owns these resources and knows the best way to use them; you will only receive what we give you. Other members of the human family become objects and tools to be acquired, controlled, used, and discarded.

-- Stephanie Spellers

So how do we even get at this?  Where do we even start, to do something constructive?  For one, maybe the Bible could actually still help us, if we had a more accurate understanding of things (that have subsequently been co-opted by those whose only purpose seems to be to promote fear...and make money off it).  Wrong thinking moves in the wrong direction, as it moves things simply into the rhetorical realm.  Right understanding aligns us with reality and moves us towards the practicality of our daily relationship with our existence.

Dominion, for example (in the Bible), does not mean domination (especially, as described above):

The book of Genesis is often blamed for the domination story because, in the Garden of Eden story, human beings are given dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28). People assume dominion means domination, but I don’t think you have to read the story that way. The nature of God in the first creation story isn’t God dominating and forcing the world into a certain mold. It is “Let there be light.” It’s a permission-giving power.

It’s such a fascinating phrase: “Let there be light.” And also “Let there be land, let there be sea, let there be crawling creatures, let there be fish, let there be humans.” It’s a permission-giving rather than a domination. Then when human beings are made in the image of God, and God says, “You can have dominion,” we would expect it should be the same kind of gentle presence rather than a dominating, controlling, exploiting presence. It’s not “Let there be exploitation.” It’s very, very different.

-- Brian McLaren