As For Me and My House, We Shall Serve the Lord
A lot has already been written about Jeff Sessions, about his use of a Biblical quote to justify political actions, and about the reasons why he’s wrong. I don’t know that I can say anything at this point that hasn’t been said already.
Which is not to say that I don’t have some thoughts on the matter.
As a Catholic, I do believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I believe that it is the product of an imperfect and broken humanity trying to comprehend our God’s attempts to set us back on the right path. In some ways, it is as reflective of our constant failure to understand as it is about what God is trying to say to us.
The Bible is how we come to know God — how we come into a personal relationship with Him. This is why we study the Bible, why we read it in a spirit of prayer and contemplation, and why we look to our learned and holy predecessors and spiritual leaders for guidance. It is a lifelong process of questioning, of challenging our easy and comfortable assumptions.
Then there are those who don’t take the Bible seriously. Those who don’t believe in God or who have serious doubts about the whole Judeo-Christian mythology have no reason to see it as any different from the myths of ancient Greece, or the Epic of Gilgamesh. I don’t agree with that view, but I can certainly understand and respect it.
But Jeff Sessions seems to fall somewhere in between. At best, he seems to be a cynical operative who recognizes the value of co-opting the Bible to his own ideals. He certainly doesn’t seem to have much interest in letting God, or the person of Jesus, or really even Saint Paul whom he so readily quoted, challenge his worldview. If he believes in a god it is one made in his own image.
Nearly everyone who takes seriously their relationship to God, from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to Franklin Graham, to even members of Trump’s own Evangelical advisory council, has come out against this unholy twisting of Scripture. Those who know God and who know Jesus Christ are clear and unambiguous in their message. Our God is a God who favors the poor, the needy, and the vulnerable, a God who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. There simply is no moral justification for the policy of separating children from their families. End of discussion.
In Revelation 3: 16, Jesus tells the Church of Laodicea, “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.” Sessions seems to neither accept the challenges of a true relationship with God nor admit a disregard for the notion that such is possible. He does appear to be the embodiment of that lukewarm faith so distasteful to the Lord.
Laodicea, in its day, was a wealthy and self-reliant community which spurned any outside help or government assistance. “You keep saying, ‘I am so rich and secure that I want for nothing,'” Jesus goes on to tell them in Revelation 3: 17. “‘Little do you realize how wretched you are, how pitiable and poor, how blind and naked!'”
It’s a message, I think, American Christians would do well to heed at this moment.
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