As so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ endorse, with great enthusiasm, new attacks by our government on desperately ill children, we may as well be overt about it.
What would Satan do?
I think of my continuing inner debate about good and evil as I hear of the latest policy change. It was made quietly, behind the curtain, with no public announcement. The secret came out as families of very ill children showed official letters to news outlets. I first heard of it from a clip of a town hall meeting held by Joe Biden in North Carolina. The news took me back to the history lessons I learned as a child: history from nineteen and a half centuries ago: 64 AD.
It was a horrible fire. For 6 days and 7 nights, Romans saw their capital city burn.
The Emperor Nero rushed back from the outskirts to direct firefighting efforts and to coordinate food and shelter for the victims, even opening his own huge gardens to house them. After the fire had exhausted itself, he went after the culprits who had started it: those damn Christians.
Christians had been subjected to mild suspicion for a few decades. They were an upstart cult that did not follow the rules most religions had been going along with for a very long time. Even if you did not worship gods other than your own, it was simple politeness to acknowledge their holy days. Jews were exempted out of historical necessity. They weren’t about to go with other gods. They had been worshiping their own way for thousands of years before Rome existed.
But Christians? They had no such excuse. That self-centered, self-righteous group had only been a part of Roman life for a couple of decades. Still, exceptions could be made. Even if they were a rude bunch, they posed no real threat.
But burning down Rome was a few bridges too far. Nero quickly got creative in finding ways to torture and kill those who had burned the city. One way was to light up a few nighttime garden parties by putting Christians to the stake around the perimeters of the festivities and setting them on fire. Tit-for-tat.
A growing number of Romans thought about alternate theories, engaging in an early form of follow-the-money. Nero took advantage of the destruction by dramatically expanding palace grounds, claiming property and building on top of the ashes. Maybe imperial thugs had started the fire. That speculative bit of underground propaganda added to a growing upper-class resentment. A few years later, as Nero fled from Rome in fear of his life, word got to him that the Senate had declared him Enemy of the People and had arranged to have him arrested and publicly beaten to death. Nero was frightened at having to take his own life. He had his secretary kill him before he could be captured.
Nero’s persecution of Christians got him into the Christian Bible in a sort of oblique way. For a long time, rumors floated around the Christian community, especially in distant provinces, that Nero had not really died, or that he would soon somehow resurrect himself. He would then regain power and Christians would face more torture and death. Lots of fear had been earned by Rome among Christians. Burning at the stake could do that to folks.
John was a Christian exiled to the Island of Patmos. He followed a common Christian safety practice and used 666 as a code for Nero, and the number seven to symbolize Rome’s seven hills. His writings became the Book of Revelation. That is how the Antichrist, Satan’s answer to Jesus, was born in Christian mythology. John predicted more oppression, with an eventual return of a triumphant Jesus. All in code.
Later generations did not know the code. Much superstition, some deadly, flows through history from all that. The most common takeoff is that Satan will send a supernatural answer to Jesus. The Antichrist will take power in order to oppress God’s people, but will eventually be defeated. Satan’s followers will perish in a lake of fire.
After his retirement as President, Ronald and Nancy Reagan purchased a lovely home in California. They discovered the street address was 666. They quickly applied for, and received, a change to 668. When Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, purchased a property in New York with a 666 street address, he never bothered to change it. The numerical coincidence was noticed by pretty much nobody.
Times had changed.
In fact, a recent car commercial for Acura aired on television many times, without any noticeable public stir. It came from a Rolling Stones hit decades ago.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste…
The man of wealth and taste endorses the new automobile. Shouldn’t you buy it too?
Only those familiar with the Rolling Stones might recognize the song as Sympathy for the Devil. One detail doesn’t make it into the TV ad. The man of wealth and taste is Satan himself: tempting Jesus and performing all manner of evil though history.
I have thought about Satan many times. Once was when I talked with a religious leader in Maryland. I described the two aspects of my own existence I find most troubling. One is outward, evil and suffering in the world. The other is evil within myself. There are many crummy things in my history I wish I could go back and change. It is a common thought among at least some Christians. I remember that pastor as a thoughtful man. He agreed with my view. The two parts of human existence that troubled him the most were suffering in the world and evil within himself.
I like to think of myself as inherently good, and of own evil as a turning against what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. I think of evil as a sort of self-betrayal, at least in part.
Satan, and his minion the Antichrist, are a convenient vehicle for some religious folks to answer the perennial contradiction of a beneficent creator allowing evil. It doesn’t strike me as a particularly logical answer. If Satan exists, wouldn’t God have had to create him? And, if Satan has read biblical prophesy, wouldn’t he know he will be defeated in the end? Why bother?
Still, I can see the mythology as emotionally satisfying.
There is evil.
There is good.
We want to go toward our better angels.
And so, I thought, as I often do, of my inner debate as I heard of the latest policy change. It was made quietly, behind the curtain, with no public announcement. The secret came out as families of very ill children showed official letters to news outlets. I only first heard of it from a clip of a town hall meeting held by Joe Biden in North Carolina. Biden was interrupted by a Trump supporter, as he criticized Donald Trump. The protestor shouted:
Greatest president we ever had!
There followed a confrontation between the Trump supporting protester and a member of the audience. Both were escorted out. Conservative coverage focused on what they perceived as a contradiction. Biden was talking about Trump bullying tactics even as a protester was expelled. Less conservative coverage mentioned the only reaction from Biden himself:
Look, be careful with anybody, they can say what they want, don’t worry about it.
Seems like less a self-contradiction than a contrast with my President.
Only a few news reports focused on the unfortunate timing of the protest.
The candidate was talking about a program that allows people from other countries to stay long enough to get essential life-saving medical treatment for their children, treatment not available in their home countries. From CBS:
There is growing uncertainty this morning for immigrant families, whose sick children are being treated in the US. It comes after the Trump administration rolled back a program allowing families to live in the US while receiving medical care.
Gayle King, CBS This Morning, August 30, 2019
Errol Barnett reported on one of the families, typical of those affected.
The family, which is from Honduras and here in the US legally, said that this policy rollback may cost their 16 year old son his life. The Sanchezes already lost their daughter to cystic fibrosis, but really found a sense of hope for their son here at Boston Children’s. Now, though, that sense of hope is turning into dread.
Doctors tell them their son Jonathan will die without treatment. The Trump administration tells them they cannot stay to receive that treatment. They, and several hundred other families have been told to leave within 33 days. The program, for those who are here legally because they require life-saving medical treatment, was ended August 7. News organizations didn’t find out for over 3 weeks. The usual announcement of a policy change was not made. Reporters discovered the change because a few families showed them the official notification to leave medical care behind.
The change will affect several hundred families temporarily in the US for treatment. Thousands participate each year, receiving life-saving treatment, then going back home. Those in future need will be prohibited from traveling to the United States.
Candidate Trump famously explained why immigration from the south must stop. He accused refugees of rape, drug dealing. Mere statistical evidence is unpersuasive to those who find such arguments compelling. In fact, immigrants – even illegal immigrants – are more careful to comply with American laws than the citizens we meet everyday. It is difficult to imagine how very ill children fit that false image. How can they be accused of criminality?
Who would have the heart to bully them out of the country?
Former Vice President Joe Biden was talking about that medical program, and the change that should strike us as a deliberately, and pointlessly, cruel attack on vulnerable children. It was at that point that he was interrupted.
Greatest president we ever had!
That reaction seems typical among the more conservative of my brothers and sisters in Christ. They seem to delight in what others of us see as wanton acts of brutality. And it is not the only cruelty they embrace.
There are repeated reports, some but not all unsubstantiated, of abuse within unregulated confinement facilities. Lack of basic hygienic materials, soap, toothbrushes, flu shots is endemic. Tainted food is reportedly served. One story has a small child spilling soup and being told by an impatient guard that she would be deprived of any more meals unless she licked the spilled soup off the floor.
That story prompted immediate action from the Trump administration, whose response was to quickly tell congressional oversight staff they would not be permitted to investigate. It seems the staffers had violated the wishes of the administration by actually talking with captive children, and had asked staff about stories they were hearing. Such rudeness would not be tolerated.
The stories that firm regulations are being routinely broken, that children are deprived of basic hygienic materials, as well as health care, have been confirmed by Trump officials. Those officials have taken quick action to … change the regulations so toothbrushes, blankets, food, and health care will no longer be required.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has criticized fellow Christians for their enthusiasm about such policies, those who use religion as a weapon rather than as inspiration to help the least of these.
I believe there has been a wholesale soul-selling of Republican politicians and Conservative Christian leaders;
And he is only a little more sparing with the rest of us, criticizing…
…the increasing silence of many of my white, moderate Christian friends…
If Satan really does exist, if the Antichrist is destined to be his messenger, it strikes me as unlikely that he will be here to oppress God’s people. It seems to me he will come to convert the faithful to himself, to tempt us with loyalty to our narrow group, with that group’s political power over outsiders. To turn us against our own sacred nature.
Perhaps Satan’s chosen one is here now, basking in the glory of his success.
We are increasingly participating in a tribal form of Christianity, a Christianity without Jesus or His teachings.
I wonder if our houses of worship are becoming beautiful, serene, sanctuaries – to which we can retreat each week, sing our ancient hymns, and comfortably … lose our souls.
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