Tim Kim - On the Election of a King - November 20, 2016

Co-pastor Tim asks whether or not there is such a thing as a "Christian" response to the election of Donald Trump and compares our current political climate to everything from the first king of Israel to Nazi Germany (but like, without trying to be all sensationalizing).

Readings:

From the Book of Jeremiah:
As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier. Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words, was alarmed, nor did they tear their garments. Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son and Seraiah son of Azriel and Shelemiah song of Abdeel to arrest the secretary Baruch and the prophet Jeremiah. But the Lord hid them.

From Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates:
You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine.

From Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow-human beings. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The one who despises another will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing that we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves. We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about people and their frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to those weaker - is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God did not despise humanity, but became human for humanity’s sake.