The question Pence needs to answer if he’s going to run around proclaiming Trump as a Christian soldier is whether the president has found occasion to repudiate the anti-Christian views he expressed so eloquently as a presidential candidate. Two occasions stand out.
The first, in front of a conservative Christian audience in Iowa no less, showed the candidate unwilling to confess that he ever needed to ask God for forgiveness.
[M]oderator Frank Luntz was very anxious to get the presidential candidates talking about their religious beliefs and habits. It just went sideways with Trump now and then.
Luntz asked The Donald if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, and it was really as though the idea had never occurred to him:
“If I do something wrong, I try to do something right,” he said. “I don’t bring God into that picture.”
On another occasion, Trump (who had adopted the habit of brandishing a Bible in appearances before religious audiences) was asked about his favorite passage of Scripture. He waxed incoherent, but eventually got to the point:
“Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many,” he responded. “And some people — look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us.”
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” happens to be the one passage from the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus Christ most specifically and emphatically told his followers not to observe:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …
Let’s hear the president backtrack on these two howling pieces of evidence that he clearly knows as much about Christianity as a dingo knows about nuclear rocketry — and that if he does understand it, he wants nothing to do with it. In their hearts, conservative evangelicals know that despising feminists and fighting reproductive rights or championing discrimination against gay people and Muslims just shows that people like Trump hate (rather than love, as Jesus enjoined) their common enemies. It is no substitute for belief. It’s time to stop treating Donald Trump like he’s a proud man of God until he evinces faith in something other than his almighty self.
Article Appeared @http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/pence-says-president-trump-is-a-believer-really.html