Russell Moore made a great point a couple weeks ago when he called out evangelical Trump supporters for making jokes rather than owning up to the evil Donald Trump is wreaking on the world. His particular point was laughing off Trump’s cruel immigration practices.
“What we learn to laugh at disciples us. It trains our consciences to enjoy and not to recoil from what once would have shocked us,” he wrote. “A lie becomes a joke which becomes a meme which becomes a game which becomes just the way things are. When cruelty and degradation are funny, something has happened to us. Something breaks, something not easily bound back up. We can laugh our way to hell.”
Mark Wingfield
This perfectly describes why so many conservative evangelicals have lost the plot of Christianity and snicker and joke about things that are no laughing matter.
I understand this culture because I was raised in it. My childhood as a Southern Baptist in Oklahoma was drenched in jokes about Pollocks, Jews, Mexicans, Blacks, gays and women. It was not until I was a 27-year-old working in Atlanta that a joke-weary woman had the courage to tell me the joke I retold was not funny all. It was demeaning and cruel.
In that spirit, let me say to anyone who is still laughing at Trump and his actions, it’s not funny. You’re not funny. You are cruel and insensitive. That’s not because I’m a snowflake or have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Those are merely more bad jokes you’ve bought into and keep repeating.
Separating children from their parents is not funny. Firing military leaders because they are female or Black isn’t funny. Killing innocent schoolchildren in Iran isn’t funny. Violating the Constitution isn’t funny. Installing the most incompetent cabinet in American history isn’t funny. Shooting citizen protesters dead on the street isn’t funny.
“I get that you are passionate about ‘owning the libs.’ But what is it you’re actually for?”
I get that you are passionate about “owning the libs.” But what is it you’re actually for? American politics is not a game. There are dire consequences to the actions taken by our president and his cabinet.
While you are chuckling about making liberals like me upset, you are condoning the deaths of millions of people around the world who have lost vital food and medicine. You are condoning the cruel imprisonment of people who came to America “the right way” but aren’t white. And you are laughing as the foundations of democracy itself are assaulted daily.
None of this is funny. It is deadly serious. And your laughter makes you look like the village idiot. To quote Russell Moore, you are laughing your way to hell. But because of your callousness, you are trying to take everyone else with you.
We need you to wake up and help us fix the problems Trump is creating every day. To everything there is a season, Ecclesiastes says. And this is not the season for laughter. It is the time for sober action to restore the rule of law and live out the true Spirit of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels. No joke.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.