Confession time. I didn’t watch a single video of the Democratic National Convention either on television, YouTube, or any other form of social media. But I read the transcripts. I find it a lot easier to read these things in my own voice than to hear them from people I’m not even sure I trust. And for me personally, I felt it was adults offering candy to little children who hadn’t even had a decent meal yet. It was a superficially wonderful to read—but it made me feel as if I was back in Bible school where it was all “stories” with extraordinarily little substance.
I’ve always known this about Democrats. They’re as religious as most Conservatives. I’ve seen it over and over again in stump speeches, campaign ads, and even interviews on the news. But never before has it been more syrupy (and nauseating) than it was this year (2020). “I’m a Christian…”“I love God…”“My faith is…”“God loves diversity…” It was all about God, all the way, all the time.
And I get it. Democrats were trying to take God back—to rend his image away from the Trumpanzees who had so tarnished God’s name and image.
So, when I read that Franklin Graham said, “there was an absence of God,” I couldn’t help but think to myself…“I would be surprised if he said anything else.” What I found even more intriguing was the Fox “news” headline, “Franklin Graham REFLECTS (my emphasis) on ‘Absence of God…” It was kind of a “genius” move for them since those who have exalted Trump above all else had no compulsion to really think about what Graham said. It was an Evangelical ‘reflection,’ and all they needed to do was fold their hands in prayer and thank their God that someone like Graham was speaking for them.
Yet here’s the irony: Franklin Graham couldn’t “see” God because Franklin Graham doesn’t KNOW God. He knows only a deity he created in his head—and that God looks like him: angry, vengeful, bigoted, racist, misogynist, power-mad, money-hungry…’
I’ve often wondered what Graham would do were to find himself in a biblical situation where a human came in contact with God. For example:
If he were to see a burning bush on the side of Mt Sinai, he’d probably call it the ‘fire from hell’ and douse it with water.
If he were to dream of ‘sheaves of grain rising up to bow down to his sheave of grain,’(Joseph) he would simply take that to mean he was special, and that those who refused to bow down to him were Satanists (as he does now).
If he was visited by God to kill his only son (Abraham/Isaac), would he assume that his son was gay and that’s why God asked him to kill the boy.
If an Angel of the Lord/God came to him and announced he was going to wipe out an entire society because the sent of their “sins,”(Sodom and Gomorrah) unlike Abraham who tried to convince God NOT to do it, Franklin Graham would be clapping his hands and jumping up and down with glee begging God to hurry and get it done.
In the life of Christ, I can’t help but suspect he’d be at the head of the crowd, next to Caiaphas yelling, “We have no king but Caesar/Trump.”
So that he couldn’t see God in the DNC is to be expected. The only God he cares about (or knows about) is the God he created (and only part of the God created in the Bible): bigoted, misogynistic, angry, homophobic, and vengeful. This God exists in the Bible, and the Bible itself questions these traits in that it openly calls out God’s actions. It does nothing to sugarcoat God’s activities, even when God is at his worst behavior. It simply tells us what God did.
But there’s another God in the Bible as well. A God of compassion, who loves immigrants, who demands justice for all races, who cares deeply about the poor—the widow and orphan—and those who struggle under the abuse of power (even the power of the Temple)—particularly under the abuse of those who wear God’s name (see Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel).
Both gods exist simultaneously not only in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament as well, and the authors of the Bible didn’t try to hide that from us. Graham, however, seems to be very committed to hiding that from us and especially his followers.
So, in his comment we can see that Graham cares only about the older/genocidal God, not the latter. When he watched the DNC Convention, he didn’t see vengeance, homophobia, misogyny, pettiness, meanness—he didn’t see HIS God: therefore, he “didn’t see God.” The God he wanted to see is the God Jesus put to rest in the synoptic gospels. A God that Jesus redefined through compassion, empathy, and even humanness… a God who built “mansions” for those who suffered most under Roman/Jewish Elite oppression. That’s the God Graham couldn’t see in the DNC, and that’s the God he so values in Donald Trump.
To that end, I—for one—am grateful that Graham didn’t see that God. At least not in the DNC. It’s time that all of us—like Jesus—put the vengeful God to rest and embrace the “father” that Jesus saw: compassion, empathy, diversity—the God that Jesus called “Abba/daddy.”
Franklin Graham is the Caiaphas of our modern age, and Donald Trump is Pontius Pilate. Franklin Graham cares little about Jesus or what he stood for. He cares even less about Jesus’ God. But he cares a lot about what Pilate/Trump thinks about him. And that’s the God he missed. The God who said, “Father forgive them…” even while hanging from a cross.
Long-Live Jesus’ God.