THE POWERS THAT BE, THAT FORCE US TO LIVE LIKE WE DO

Speaking of the hottest places in hell, Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders now claim that the Bible supports their policy of taking children – even nursing babies – from their parents and putting them in cages. 

Early Christians had a complicated relationship with secular authority.  Their Roman overlords didn’t much care about the religion of their subject states.  All they demanded was internal stability and prompt payment of taxes.  That’s why, towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees followed him around asking questions that were aimed at getting him to say something seditious.  One of them asked Jesus whether it was lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar. 

Jesus (Matthew 22:21) said, show me the money.  The Pharisees produced a coin, and Jesus said, who’s image is on the coin?  Caesar’s, they replied.  And Jesus responded with his famous maxim: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

Sessions and Sanders were probably referencing St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in which Paul wrote (Romans 13:1-2): “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”

That’s all well and good, but ten years later, Paul discovered that the distinction between Caesar’s things and God’s things looked different to Caesar than it did to him.  The Emperor Nero had Paul beheaded.

Sessions and Huckabee do the typical Republican Christian thing – they cherry pick their Bible verses.  If they’d read a little further in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, they’d have seen this (Romans 13: 8-10): “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Donald Trump, of course, is notorious for committing adultery, stealing, and lying.  Loving his neighbors – for instance, Canada and Mexico – isn’t even on his radar screen.  Not that any of this matters to good Christian Republicans.  For them, the Gospel of St. Donald trumps everything that came before it.