Like me, you saw the creepy insurrectionist’s prayers during the coup, and Q-Anon’s belief they are doing God’s will, and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene invoking God on Twitter today. I’m a former Republican, forever Christian and a former student of theology.

This is how the far-right views God:
-God loves them but not “illegals” or “leftists”
-The God they pray to is not the God “leftist” Christians pray to
-A God they own & who does not exist for humans outside of American borders
-A God who loves America more than any other nation

- God installs their chosen political leaders as saviors; Satan installs leftist leaders as destroyers of righteousness
- God has given them the right to sit in judgment of other sinners
- God wants them to have guns
- God is making the state of the world better through them

I cannot stress this enough. None of this is supported by the Bible they claim fealty to. None.

It’s so easy to pick and choose biblical scriptures to support what you want the Bible to back you up on, and that practice has led many good people astray.

I can show you a scripture that men shouldn’t dress as women and vice versa. But it’s one scripture away from the one that says you’ll live long if you only kill bird babies and not bird mommies.

It’s five away from the one that says you can’t wear cotton and linen together (sin, but make it fashion!). And it’s like ten away from the one about it’s okay to stone non-virgins to death.

You can’t do this. That’s not how the Bible works. It must also be read as a narrative.

And the final act was to take all these little laws and weirdnesses and compress them down. God loves all. Love all. Love God. The end. Nothing about Q’s Christianity is real or Bible-based, and that includes people like Marjorie Taylor Greene’s.

I’m not saying these people don’t love God. I’m not saying I’m better than them. I’m saying they missed the point, went too far astray, let judgment lead to hate, hate lead to ignorance, and ignorance lead to blind devotion to a human, and that led to this mess.

And saddest of all, like all the religious cults before them, they’re skipping the part of the Bible that warned this very thing could/would happen, and they’re doing great harm to the religion they love, which is full of good people trying to follow the real teachings.

I tell you this so that perhaps when a conversation opens with your far-right relatives you might use this to understand their thinking, where they went wrong, and then plant a seed of realization in their mind that might germinate into enlightenment.

Just don’t ever ever plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard. The Bible says that’s wrong. Fin.