Jerry Falwell Jr. Bad At Jesus Again

Boy, never would have seen that coming.

Jerry Falwell Jr. is getting some attention again, for being an asshole. The president of the Christian clown college Liberty University has always been one of Donald Trump's most steadfast fluffers, even in the face of rude liberals who point out how Trump isn't "Christian" in any sense of the word, and how it seems pretty hypocritical for the "family values" crowd to be falling all over itself for a thrice-married adulterer who is currently named as an unindicted co-conspirator for (allegedly! LOL) directing his personal lawyer to pay off the porn stars and Playmates he was fucking (allegedly! LOL) while his latest wife was home caring for their new baby. And he (allegedly! LOL) directed those payments in order to benefit his campaign!

In an interview with the Washington Post , Falwell gave a bunch of evangelical boilerplate answers about how he, a GOD-FEARIN' HETEROSEXUAL WHITE CHRISTIAN, could support Trump so much. For instance, he just thinks it's really dumb and bad for people to think we should embrace brown Mexican children, because when Jesus told the little children to come to him, He wasn't talking about THOSE kids:

I almost laugh out loud when I hear Democrats saying things like, "Jesus said suffer the little children to come unto me" and try to use that as the reason we should open up our borders.

He almost literally LOLs! Because, like, all that lovey dovey compassionate bullshit Jesus was always yip-yapping about wasn't meant for governments , it was meant for individual people! So go on and fuck over some kids, EMPEROR GOVERNMENT KING MAN TRUMP!

It's such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally — to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor — can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that's the earthly kingdom, I'm about the heavenly kingdom and I'm here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

Right, we've all heard that old expression, from the Holy Bible!

It's a distortion of the teaching of Christ to say Jesus taught love and forgiveness and therefore the United States as a nation should be loving and forgiving, and just hand over everything we have to every other part of the world. That's not what Jesus taught. You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way, to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.

We're going to pause for a beat just to contemplate the timeline we live in, and will be back in a moment.

Whew, that was longer than we thought. First of all, what is a nation but a collection of individuals organized together, who should be loving and forgiving, like Jesus said? And maybe the policies of that collection of individuals should be kind and decent? Oh wait, we think we might just have found a fatal flaw in Young Jerry's argument.

Anyway, yes, if America is kind to immigrant children, then we are a theocracy, whereas doing things Falwell wants, like banning gay marriage and passing horseshit "religious freedom" laws that are only intended to discriminate against LGBT people and women, in order to uphold the persecution complex of right-wing Christians, is a good and normal and "secular" way of doing government.

GO ON, JERRY.

There's two kingdoms. There's the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you'd like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what's best for your country. Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It's because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It's just common sense to me.

OK, there is so much to unpack here, but we're going to try. There are the parts where Falwell is just flat out mindfuckingly wrong. For instance, at one point he says Trump's party did really well in the midterms. ( Wrong. ) He says he actually thinks Trump wants what's best for the country, as opposed to what's best for Trump's bank account and the bank accounts of the foreign bad actors who cheated him into office. He thinks Trump has "business acumen," when Trump's entire record is that of a failed businessman who fails a lot, a dipshit who can't Art Of The Deal himself out of a paper bag. Truly Trump is a dumbshit's idea of a rich and successful person, and dumbshit, thy name is "Falwell."

Then there are the parts that make us say, "Christ, What An Asshole," because CHRIST, WHAT AN ASSHOLE. For instance, there is Falwell's notion that "helping people" as Americans means saying cruel shit about how "a poor person never gave anybody charity," therefore we should let Trump fuck over poor people in America and abroad, because he's rich, we guess. (OR IS HE?) But here again, Falwell is just being a typical unfeeling GOP evangelical, repeating decades-old GOP talking points without considering the actual implications of the policies they support, because they're too busy bowing down and praising their true God, Mammon, who is very orange and can't stop tweeting.

But then there are the parts where Falwell is not actually wrong . (Weird, we know!) He's right that throughout Mosaic law and Christian teaching that "render unto Caesar" is a running theme, that man's governments are of the earth, whereas God's kingdom is not. (Of course, Jesus's entire adult life was political. He was crucified for acting politically in such a way that threatened to undermine Roman rulers, and his teaching that God's kingdom was greater than man's was viewed as inherently political . He talked about the KINGDOM of God, because a KINGDOM was something the people understood as a political set-up.) So Falwell's idea of a separation between the two is biblical, even if he's using it to justify his support for Donald Trump, a shithole human who destroys everything he touches.

Falwell also clearly believes that Trump's presidency was ordained by God, which is a biblical principle evangelicals lean on when their guy wins. Because indeed, according to the Bible, man's governments are ordained by God! You just curiously never hear them say that about anybody besides Republicans, and when somebody like Barack Obama is president, that obviously only happened because God was smoking a cigarette that day and completely playing hooky from ordaining shit.

Could Trump do anything to lose Falwell's support?

No.

Well, OK, then. That's the answer we expect from somebody who's really thought this through and isn't just a mindless automaton who gets starbursts up his pant leg every time his earthly God king takes a shit.

In short, what we have here in this Jerry Falwell Jr. interview is a trash human being who represents a cohort of trash human beings, speaking up in defense of the trashiest human being alive, whom they worship.

So basically SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY.

[ Washington Post ]

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