#Loser: How the Call of Christ Is Antithetical to Trump’s Gospel

Donald Trump’s Gospel is as follows: success means being dominant over everyone else, at all cost; the only true happiness in life is being able to be a winner, not a #loser.

What Trump Values

To tell what a person values, we must see what he treats with disgust. And over and over again, President Trump has shown that what matters most to him is domination, winning, and success. Recognize any of these?:

“I like the people who don’t get captured”

“a complete and total disgrace”

low ratings

An embarrassment

“the entire world WAS laughing and taking advantage of us”

a laughingstock

“dying magazines and newspapers”

“the failing NY Times”

Then there is the boasting, even oftentimes speaking untruths, because every interaction and gathering and situation must convey “winning.” To not win is like death itself. (This is certainly not a viewpoint limited to the President, but he has taken it to new extremes.) So we have phrases like these:

the biggest crowds

the best people

a standing ovation

the greatest in the history of …

the best words

I was a great student

I went to the Ivy League

so much winning

While politics has always been a dirty business, and money and power have always corrupted people, our President professes to be a Christian. Worse, one of his most reliable support bases is white evangelical Christians. And yet, rarely, if ever, do I hear his white Christian supporters do anything but egg him on as he places power and dominance above anything else. It’s not just that they tolerate his rude, self-centered words; many of them actually like those words.

They like that someone is sticking it to the Man, dominating those who they perceive as having dominated them. They don’t really care that much how the President goes about it. Humiliation, insults, boasting, and untruths are all fair game, excused, or denied because what really matters to all too many Christians is winning.

Jesus Christ Was a #Loser

But is winning the goal of a true Christian? Is being a laughingstock–or failing, or having low ratings, or even dying–shameful for a Christian? Is being on top what constitutes Christian success?

Well, if so, Jesus Christ was the greatest low-ratings #Loser of all time.