The "Christians" Mocking Jesus and Defunding The Least of These

It’s been said that a budget is a moral document.

I agree.

House Republicans voted almost unanimously on a budget that would cut 2 trillion dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, and drastically reduce or eliminate funding for programs and services that tend to the essential needs of our most vulnerable, most on the margins, most-threatened citizens.

They gleefully approved taking food, healthcare, and support from the working poor, the hungry, the homeless, the physically sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, those in public housing and public schools, those buried in debt—while endorsing tax cuts to the top 1 percent of the population.

And then, they publicly prayed: a vile mockery of Jesus and of actual people of faith.

This MAGA Evangelical-led crusade is a clear and shameless assault on those Jesus called "the least of these," the ones he lived in solidarity with while here.

In the Gospel of Matthew, he told those who would aspire to his likeness that their treatment of such marginalized people was a direct act, either of affection or contempt toward him. It was the very measure of their religion. In fact, contrary to what Evangelical preachers have led you to believe, Jesus says that it is in their response to the vulnerable and overlooked, not any altar call or magic prayer or public act of piety—that their salvation or condemnation comes.

In their defense of discarding Government-subsidized care programs, many Conservative Christians have long contended that the Church not the Government should care for people. The problem, is that they (the very people who voted-in the politicians currently dismantling healthcare, de-funding public schools, and eliminating meal programs) are the same people filling many of the country's churches (which apparently were already supposed to be doing this least-loving but are not.)

Then exactly where and when is this love going to make an appearance?

Right now, I don't see these Christians rushing en masse to come to the aid of the poor and the homeless, to immigrants and refugees and to those living in food insecurity.
We're not witnessing an overwhelming outpouring of compassion from Conservative church folk who have declared that they're going to repair the homes and make the lunches and pay for the surgeries and watch the children for the tens of millions about to be kicked to the curb by this Conservative leadership—and we shouldn't be holding our breath.

The truth is, if these same people who call the Evangelical Church home had been following Jesus' example all along we wouldn't be having these conversations. If these professed men and women of God were truly burdened to love their brothers and sisters as they would Jesus, this would be a non-issue.

But we do have this epidemic of poverty and pain and hunger, and the disheartening truth is that these Christians are the very people always loudly telling the least to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps," neglecting the fact that they have no boots to begin with.

These people don't see the ironic tension of a supposedly "Christian nation" that can't or won't care for its most vulnerable, brimming with supposed followers of Jesus in leadership who somehow can rationalize that not feeding people is the compassionate response.

For some reason a country allegedly filled with disciples of a man who spent his ministry years healing the sick, is dead set on taking away healthcare.

Honestly, Republican Christians don't want their Government or the Church to lift people in need. They'd prefer to live with the fictional narrative that poor people are poor because they're lazy, that those suffering with mental illness or massive debt are so because of some moral failing or bad decision. This story allows them to keep the stuff they have, to ignore the call to love their neighbor as themselves, and to feel morally superior in the process.

Jesus says that whatever we do to the poor and the hurting and the hungry we do to him. That should be a terrifying proposition to Republicans who claim the Christian faith or call the American Conservative Church home.

GOP leadership and voters in the rank-and-file who co-sign their predatory actions toward those who are the most in need of compassion and mercy in these days are saying with great clarity: "To hell with you, Jesus, we don't give a damn about you."

This is what happens when the least are treated as worthless and when Christians discard the compassionate heart of their faith story.

This is what it looks like when the Church abandons its namesake and tells him to fend for himself.

This is how Jesus is crucified by those claiming his name.

Jesus once said of his betrayers: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

The most vile reality of all—is that these predators know exactly what they’re doing.

And so do the rest of us.