Franklin Graham, the preacher who believes the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but had no problem supporting a twice divorced, thrice married adulterer who bragged he could grab women by the genitals because he was a celevrity and could get away with it, and who also led a prayer at Donald Trump’s inauguration, has decided Trump’s actions were part of God’s plan, but a once married veteran, and the gay, South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg faces eternal damnation if he doesn’t repent.
“Presidential candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is right—God doesn’t have a political party. But God does have commandments, laws, and standards He gives us to live by. God is God. He doesn’t change. His Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Yep, religion is solid. It stands for something. It does not waver.
That’s its strength.
Remember Matthew 7:24–27?
“Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it didn’t fall, for it was founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn’t do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
It is based on the Bible, the inerrant word of God with every word coming to us from God, so there is no wiggle room. What it says, it says and means.
Take the passages that condemn adultery by name.
We have the Old Testament telling us:
Exodus 20:14: “You shall not commit adultery.
Hebrews 13:4: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all sexual immorality.
Jeremiah 13:27 “Your adulteries and lustful neighings, your shameless prostitution! I have seen your detestable acts on the hills and in the fields. Woe to you, Jerusalem! How long will you b unclean?”
And the new:
Luke 16:18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Matthew 5:27-28 “You have heard that it was saod, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And there are about 20 more inerrant verses about adultery and divorce that are just as forthright.
Although it actually doesn’t, Graham claims the Bible defines homosexuality as a sin.
“Mayor Buttigieg also said that to him, ‘the core of faith is regard for one another.’ We are definitely to support and help each other—no question. But that does not come above believing and being obedient to what God says is truth. Without that foundation, we really can’t help anyone in a way that impacts their eternity. The core of the Christian faith is believing and following Jesus Christ, who God sent to be the Savior of the world—to save us from sin, to save us from hell, to save us from eternal damnation.”
Graham is upset that Mayor Peter Buttigieg has spoken several times about his Christian faith and has asserted that when both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hold and promote inhumane political positions whole claiming themselves good Christians they are being hypocritical.
When word came out that Trump had paid for the silence of a porn star with whom he had a fling to the tune of $13,000 do this would not interfere with his getting elected, Graham went to hi defense saying,
“President Trump I don’t think has admitted to having an affair with this person. And so this is just a news story, and I don’t even know if it’s accurate.
I believe at 70 years of age the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. He is not President Perfect.”
Regarding Trump’s moral character, Graham asserted.
“We certainly don’t hold him up as the pastor of this nation and he is not. But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values, he does have a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world, and I appreciate the fact that he protects religious liberty and freedom.”
What he appreciates is that while his fire and Brimstone, the God of love being a spiteful, vindictive, spoiled God of hate and petulance approach to Christianity is not attracting people to Jesus and with them their wallets, Trump is helping to legislate all Americans to Graham’s version of Christianity.
Whatever is wrong with the country is not the result of selfservingly marrying religion to politics, is because,
“Our country’s got a sin problem, and I believe if these politicians in Washington would recognize the moral failure of so many of their policies that maybe we could fix it.”
This while he defends Trump.
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When former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and their wives stood during the saying of the Apostles’ Creed, the short summary of the core Christian beliefs, at George H.W. Bush’s funeral, and Trump stood silently, Graham defended Trump.
“Guess what — I don’t usually sing in church. Why? Because I can’t carry a tune! And, I have no rhythm,” Graham wrote. “I have to watch someone else clapping or I get off beat, so usually I just keep my hands in my pockets. Look around in church sometime — lots of people aren’t singing.”
There’s a huge difference between singing a hymn and acknowledging the basic beliefs of the religion you claim you hold dear.
Getting back to Trump’s wanton promiscuity, Graham has defended him,
“I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business. And we’ve got other business at hand that we need to deal with.”
So our president having paid off a porn star with whom he had a fling just months after his youngest son was born so the public would not know about it, something that could have kept him from getting elected is “nobody’s business”.
According to Graham,
“I don’t have concern, in a sense, because these things happened many years ago – and there’s such bigger problems in front of us as a nation that we need to be dealing with than other things in his life a long time ago. I think some of these things – that’s for him and his wife to deal with. I don’t defend those kinds of relationships he had. But the country knew the kind of person he was back then, and they (with the exception of the 3 million who, knowing who he was, did not vote for him) still made the decision to make him the president of the United States.”
In 1998 Franklin Graham, in defending the impeachment of Bill Clinton, had said,
“Private conduct does have public consequences. Just look at how many have already been pulled under by the wake of the president’s sin: Mr. Clinton’s wife and daughter, Ms. Lewinsky, her parents, White House staff members, friends and supporters, public officials and an unwitting American public.
The God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton’s months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”
At the time he had explained,
“A repentant spirit that says, ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,’ would go a long way toward personal and national healing.”
Yet, he does not think Trump’s private actions are “nobody’s business”, and that a man who once asked, “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” is okay without repentance.
Graham has defended the evangelical leaders who have remained faithful to Trump.
“A lot of people are slamming evangelicals for supposedly giving Donald J. Trump a pass. That’s simply not true. No one is giving him a pass. I’m certainly not, and I’ve not met an evangelical yet who condones his language or inexcusable behavior from over a decade ago. However, he has apologized to his wife, his family, and to the American people for this. He has taken full responsibility (as long as you ignore the $130,000 porn star payoff). This election isn’t about Donald Trump’s behavior from 11 years ago or Hillary Clinton’s recent missing emails, lies, and false statements. This election is about the Supreme Court and the justices that the next president will nominate. Evangelicals are going to have to decide which candidate they trust to nominate men and women to the court who will defend the constitution and support religious freedoms. My prayer is that Christians will not be deceived by the liberal media about what is at stake for future generations.”
And that brings us to Franklin Grahams latest Trumpian/Pencian religious hypocrisy.
When it came to Graham’s hypocritical call for Mayor Pete to repent for being gay, while remaining one of the most ardent supporters of the thrice-married Trump, Rick Santorum, one of the most conservative religious politicians had this to say:
“I would say that you have every right to call him out on that. Because if he’s gonna say that about Pete Buttigieg, then he needs to when Donald Trump’s accusations come up about marital infidelity and other things that is [sic] equally as sinful. He should be equal and vociferous in calling out a similar sin.”
When asked, “Infidelity, you are saying, is a similar sin as being gay?”,
he went on to explain,
“Well that’s what the Christian religion teaches. Both are violations of the traditional and sacred bonds of marriage, that outside of marriage is sinful behavior, yes.”
And he added,
“We have to be loving and tolerant of everybody. Everybody is due respect and love and should be treated with dignity and respect, and whether they choose it (being Gay) or not, I don’t know. I don’t really care. I treat people with dignity and respect no matter who they are.”
If even Santorum gets it, so should Graham.