This weeks Kitchen Table looks at the response to President Trump getting Covid…
Can 2020 get any more surreal? Just when we thought we had seen it all, President Donald Trump and his wife Melania get Covid. How do we respond? Our society is so divided, especially on social media, that you can almost predict the reactions on the two different sides. But is there a better way to respond? What can we learn from this?
David, you claim, “we need to see everyone made in the image of God then we need to see ourselves as sinners.”
I love also Trumps winding up of the left. And I suspect that this is a large part of what got him into power. Interesting that the Democrat approach is not too different than last time with identity politics and virtue signalling which didn’t work last time. Of course Trump is playing the same game but more so on the right.
“Dehumanising enemies is a problem” yes and I do like what you say about humanising our enemy David with the example of the tax collector with “God have mercy on me a sinner”.
Which then of course leads into your claim about how we need to engage. Then we know about turning the other the cheek, going the extra mile, if our enemy hungers, feed them if thirsty give them something to drink etc. But this can not be done with the power, love and sound mind of the Spirit in obedience to Christ to the will of the Father while identifying as a sinner. Satan does not cast out Satan!
Yes we are not to consider ourselves above others (God resists the arrogant and gives grace to the humble) but there can be a spiritual boasting going on in churches about how much of a sinner an individual says they are. When in reality what they are doing is being arrogant and likening themselves to the apostle Paul (the chief of all sinners) in order to attempt, and often successfully, to gain status in a church community, any hypocritically showing that they consider themselves above others.
The truth is that no-one is without sin, all have fallen short of the Glory of God and yet at the same time as you rightly say David we are created in the image of God. For the Christian their identity is in Christ, not in sin. And so while of course there is the need for the acknowledgement of sin, the recognition of the need for Christ for salvation from sin and repentance it is not something to beat ourselves over our heads about or to manipulate to make ourselves look superiour, but with gratitude and in humility be welcoming to Jesus and to be shining our light in obedience to him in joyful service that benefits the world!