The pattern emerged in the biblical text when the prophet Nathan confronted the king of Israel and said, “Thou art the man.”
And in the United States, that very same pattern now has become crystal clear.
The pattern is contempt for the poor.
The pattern is evident when a wealthy American president suggests Palestinians be removed from Gaza so Gaza might become a playground for the rich and the famous — the “Riviera” of the Middle East.
Richard T. Hughes
The pattern is evident when a wealthy American president, working with the richest man in the world, deprives millions of the poorest people in the world of food and medicine necessary for mere survival.
The pattern is evident when a wealthy American president heaps scorn on the head of an Episcopal bishop who begs him to spare the immigrant and the poor.
The pattern is evident when the Congress of the United States seeks to censure that bishop for preaching what the Gospel writer Matthew called “the gospel of the kingdom.”
And the pattern is evident when a wealthy American president turns a deaf ear to the cries of the immigrant and the refugee.
Yes, the pattern is evident, and it is an old, old pattern, as old as the story of Nathan and David, recorded in the biblical text, 1 Samuel 12.
The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
“The difference between David and the president of the United States is that David had the capacity to repent.”
“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”
The difference between David and the president of the United States is that David had the capacity to repent. The Bible tells us, “David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’” But the wealthy president of the United States, when asked if he ever asked God for forgiveness, told focus-group guru Frank Luntz, “I am not sure I have. … I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
When wealthy evangelical Christians persist in their support for the wealthy American president whose policies crush the poor, they are complicit in the very sin for which Nathan condemned David.
One can only hope that, unlike the wealthy American president, they might one day do what the gospel tells Christians to do — stand squarely on the side of the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed, and protect them from the principalities and powers that seek to make them poorer still.
Those Christians who deny that concern for the poor is central to the biblical text, or who claim that compassion for immigrants is nothing more than a left-wing “woke agenda” — those Christians either never have read the biblical text or have become so corrupted by wealth and power that they have forgotten what Jesus taught and, indeed, what Jesus was all about.
Richard T. Hughes is co-author with Christina Littlefield of Christian America and the Kingdom of God: White Christian Nationalism from the Puritans to January 6, 2021.
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