never thought Christians
would lead attack on Christian
fundamentals, but …

But here we are is the way the sentence ends.

Based on the New York Times Opinion Piece, Christians Against Empathy Aren’t Who They Think They Are by David French

… put another way, our problem isn’t with too much empathy, but too little. We’re unwilling to place ourselves in other people’s shoes, to try to understand who they are and what their lives are like.

It’s hard to talk about this issue without recognizing a fundamental truth of the moment: The attack on empathy would have gained very little traction in the church if Donald Trump weren’t president. He delights in vengeance, and he owes his presidency to the evangelical church.

Given the sharp differences between Trump and every other Republican president of the modern era, in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.

That’s exactly how empathy becomes a sin.

And because empathy is a sin, virtually any appeal to consider the suffering of Trump’s opponents becomes yet more proof that Christians are being manipulated, that their emotions are used against them.

I never thought it would be Christians who led the attack on fundamental Christian values, but here we are. The Book of Hebrews says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.”

In Christian theology, Christ engaged in the ultimate act of empathy. He didn’t imagine what it would be like to live as a man — he became one.

Our own desire for empathy, for ourselves and our friends, is almost primal. There is a deep human need to feel truly seen.

Viewed through one lens, America before Trump had its share of problems. We were fighting long wars overseas, we were still dealing with the economic overhang of the Great Recession, and we faced the kind of sharp cultural conflicts that always arise when people of different faiths and different ideologies share the same national home.

Zoom out just a bit, and you could see our abundant national blessings. In an imperfect world, the United States was a very good place to be. The American experiment was working. Our nation was free. It was secure. It enjoyed immense prosperity and power. It afforded a degree of religious toleration and economic opportunity that was the envy of most of the world.

In other words, we really did have it all, didn’t we?

The image above is of what is thought to be the first masterpiece painted by the dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn.

The New York Times, in a review of a Rembrandt show in back in 2016 stated:

Titled “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” it depicts a scene that appears in only one of the four gospels, and then as a mere footnote to the Passion narrative.

At the Last Supper, Jesus announces that one of his disciples would betray him into enemy hands.

The culprit is Judas, who has already been paid by the chief priest and elders of the Jerusalem temple to lead soldiers to the doomed man and identify him by a kiss.

Once the deed is done, however, Judas is crushed by remorse.

He rushes to the temple and throws the payment money down in front of those who hired him, as if that might absolve his guilt, though he is beyond believing it will.

In the painting, we see him kneeling and wailing with grief, his clothes disheveled, his scalp bloody where he has torn out his hair.

The elders back off in shock; the chief priest holds up one hand as if to block out the sight of the man, push him away, disappear him.

Judas will leave the temple and hang himself.

Mr. French wrote, “… in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.”

And when an accounting comes due for the support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents?

What will absolve you?

Thank God for grace.

Which I need as much as anybody else but there are some things I can do to avoid adding to the load on my back.

Good thing, there is always enough grace.

governments live die
by their ability to
sustain corruption

Mr. Trump is apparently profiting from these cases: The Times estimates that he has made more than $1.4 billion since he was elected to his second term, in part from supplicants seeking his clemency. But his subordinates, too, have benefited from the broader rollback of white-collar prosecutions.

His border czar, Tom Homan, for instance, accepted $50,000 in cash in a paper bag from undercover F.B.I. agents in September 2024 in exchange for promising to secure government favors if Mr. Trump returned to office. (Mr. Homan has denied taking the money.) Such a scheme would have ordinarily resulted in a scandal, and quite likely a prosecution. But the office that would have investigated Mr. Homan has been largely gutted — just five attorneys reportedly remain — and Mr. Homan himself remains in office.

All this self-dealing is a threat to our democracy. Illiberal governments tend to live or die by their ability to sustain corruption. That’s because they rely for support on a network of oligarchs, who in turn are tied to the administration’s success. It happened in Hungary, in Turkey, in Russia and increasingly, it is happening here.

We don’t have to end up that way. As other countries’ experience shows, when bribery is risky, rich criminals are less likely to try it, and less likely to feel bound to a regime’s success. When corruption is revealed, voters often realize that the strongman they elected cares more for a small group of rich cronies than he does about them. That’s why it’s often the corruption that is key to toppling autocratic leaders, like Joseph Estrada in the Philippines, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine and Otto Pérez Molina in Guatemala.

In a world where the Department of Justice and the president are either indifferent to or actively support rich criminals, what can be done?

Adapted from the opinion piece, One Man Stole $660 Million. He’ll Never Pay It Back By Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor and the founder of the Public Integrity Project.

In this high powered world of corruption at the highest levels of government, something to remember is the words of Silvio Dante when he said, “You’re only as good as your last envelope.“

One day, that bill is going to come due.