I suppose the upside here is the Bible was trending on Twitter.
Some social media users were in uproar at the end of the week after seeing video from the Conservative Political Action Conference revealing a golden statue of former President Donald Trump, a sculpture many equated to the “Golden Calf” story in the Old Testament book of Exodus.
“That is so cool,” said one person as the statue rolled by. Others began chanting, “Four more years,” hoping Trump will announce his intention to run for re-election in 2024 during his CPAC speech Sunday.
So far, the video, posted first by Bloomberg News reporter William Turton, has amassed around six million views.
Some critics on Twitter jumped at the chance to condemn CPAC attendees and Trump supporters, likening the gold-plated statue to the cautionary tale in Exodus, when the Israelites — who had grown impatient with Moses as he ascended to Mount Sinai — created for themselves a new god, a deity in the form of a calf.
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When Moses came down from the mountain, he brought with him two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments written by God to the Israelites, who were dancing around the false idol. The first commandment said, “You must not have any other god but me,” and the second stated, “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind.”
In his anger at the Israelites — and his brother Aaron, who helped them build the false idol — Moses smashed the tablets and destroyed the golden calf, burning it in fire.
Some on the left immediately equated the story to the state of the GOP.
“They love the 2nd Amendment, but not so much the 2nd Commandment (no false idols),” tweeted Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “Talk about worshiping a graven (and craven) image!”
New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat added: “Personality cult alert. Textbook case of the authoritarian leader-follower relationship continuing after the Beloved leaves office.”
“At a certain point,” commented MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid, “pity begins setting in.”
Some conservatives called out the statue, too.
Daily Wire columnist and podcast host Matt Walsh wrote, “Gotta say I’m not a huge fan of making literal golden idols out of political figures.”
“The symbolism is clear,” tweeted author Karen Swallow Prior, a research professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
This phenomenon isn’t new or unique
While plenty on the right have wrongly elevated Trump to god-like status, it’s not a phenomenon unique to conservatives.
Way back in 2009, before everyone was documenting all of this stuff in real time on social media, Halle Berry told the Philadelphia Daily News: “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make [President Barack Obama’s] pathway clear. I’ll do whatever he says.”
Politico ran a story titled, “The Power of Obama’s Hand,” which described the then-new president with soaring rhetoric as a man who “uses touch to control and console simultaneously.”
Ezra Klein, a columnist for The New York Times, placed Obama right into Scripture, writing in true messianic fashion, “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”
Louis Farrakhan — revered by several on the far left — claimed Obama was “the messiah.”
And in 2008, when he was still a candidate, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Moford described Obama this way: “Many spiritually advanced people I know … identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who … can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
It was bad then with Obama and it’s bad now with Trump.
Back in early January, after the riot inside the U.S. Capitol, I argued we are bearing witness to the toxic consequences of turning our politics into religion:
People are angry: they feel unheard, they see hypocrisy from the left and in the media. But religious zeal practiced by a noisy political minority is what led to what happened Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol, where rioters stormed the House and Senate chambers, damaging and stealing government property. Ultimately, four people lost their lives.
Over the summer, we saw leftist rioters literally setting cities around the country on fire, demanding people repeat the mantra “Black Lives Matter” unless they wanted to face a violent mob determined to bring about their destruction. We saw law enforcement officers as well as protesters lose their lives. We watched as businesses already struggling under coronavirus restrictions were ransacked, looted, and set ablaze, all the while many of our Democratic political leaders sat idly by, taking no substantive actions to quell the deadly violence. Some even seemed to endorse the destruction.
All of that was the result of politics as religion. Some of us are turning to politics for eternal and absolute answers, and it’s falling short.
America is looking herself in the mirror.
We’re deeply divided, and many of us are looking for hope in all the wrong places. When we turn to a rotten vine, placing total faith in political parties and people, we reap rotten fruits: violence, hatred, and division.
What happened over the summer is rotten fruit. What happened in D.C. Wednesday is rotten fruit. The deep-seated divisions broadcast all over cable news networks day-in and day-out is rotten fruit. Watching our politicians elevate their fellow activists and lawmakers to god-like statuses is rotten fruit. Demanding ideological purity from everyone around us is rotten fruit.
In John 15, Jesus told His disciples: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers.”
Our political system can be an excellent vehicle to accomplish a lot of good. But it makes for one terrible religion. It grows “useless branches” that, even if they look healthy, are dead inside, bound to crack and wither over time.
We should never turn to politics or politicians for ultimate answers.
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True hope and transformation — the kind of redemption that can lead us out of racism, sexism, hatred, and division — is found in Jesus alone, the foundation who will keep us grounded through all of life’s inevitable storms.
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock,” Jesus said in Matthew 7. “Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse, because it is build on bedrock.”
“But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand,” He continued. “When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”