We live in this time and this context. The leadership we have is fallen. We are to pray for our leaders (including the very needy and broken people who must run for the Prez and be the next narcissist in the White House). We are in this world. But the world hates us.

Consider this rant, on a site run by someone who attempts to follow Christ.

In what way are American evangelicals truly Christian? If they were, their actions would reflect their commitment to loving, serving, and taking care of fellow humans. No real evidence of this, unless one were to conflate morally flaccid obsequiousness with love. About half of them believe Obama is a Muslim and illegitimate. Organized hate groups would not survive without their implicit collusion. They hate women, hate gays, hate non-whites. Trump is their new Caliph; he will politically deliver what Falwell and Robertson couldn’t. They cannot believe that America resists their Kool Aid, and will not rapidly transform into a theocracy in which they rule absolutely, on behalf of god.

No surprise that evangelicals remain the most anti-American or Americans. They are vocally against science and evidence, most infatuated with hate groups, most subservient to big businesses, most devoted to superstition, and most resistant to free thinking and education. They are also the most economically backward; states with higher concentration of evangelicals feed more voraciously at the federal teat – while maintaining they hate government.

Evangelicals and ethics are contradictions in terms. Of course Trump, with the long list of people he will dis-empower, disenfranchise, and de-legitimize, emerges as their messiah

Christianity is redefined as loving others. Assuming that thinking the current twit in the White House is Muslim (I think he is worse: he worships himself) does not disqualify one as of Christ. Being perfect does. For the perfect do not need salvation, nor reformation. Christ came to save the unrighteous, me included.

We will be called haters if we talk about sin: if we confront. But our leaders do sin indeed. If we have to define our faith by their agenda we have lost. It matters not what you do — and Trump ain’t a saint — because the left will hate you if you have not converged.

We had a principled Christian man of impeccable character run for president in 2008 and 2012. They managed to smear him through words he never uttered, as a racist and a kook. Men who accomplish big things are rarely lacking in equally big flaws.

These media whores who constantly chastise the Republican base to vote for the lesser of two evils ’cause you’re never going to get everything you want, well those people can relax in the satisfaction that the public is now taking their words seriously. At this point I’d vote for a street hooker if she would seal the border, deport illegals in earnest, and unravel the horrifically bad free trade deals that encumber our economy.

We may choose not to stand on our rights for the sake of the gospel, but those rights remain. What we cannot do is speak untruth. Regardless of how non inclusive we are, and what codes of conduct we break. For this world considers Christianity intolerant and harassment, for we say that sickness of the soul exists.

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting.

(1 Corinthians 9:1-15 ESV)

Look not at the words, look at he consequences. For the last 40 years we have listened to the other, and tried to tolerate, tried to be inclusive, as if that will help the gospel. It has not. Instead those churches that follow that path have entered the Unitarian convergence.

Near where I live is an Unitarian Universalist Church. They fly the rainbow flag. They have a Black Lives Matter banner up over the door. They have a quote from MLK on the announcement board.

They hold services once a month.

Being political is now the whole purpose and process of that church. God isn’t involved.

We are supposed to have the power of religion, not the form of it. If we abandon the gospel so that this world calls us “Christian” — in their terms, useful wimps — woe to us. We need the gospel to preach. To Presidents and Kings, to street hookers, to Buddhist monks, and to those who think a fortnightly dose of yoga makes them spiritual .

For there is but one way to God, and that is through Christ. If hating is the cost of the gospel. let them hate.