“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God” Proverbs 14:31. That’s in the Bible.

It follows that there are prominent figures in the MAGA movement who are now contending that the Jesus of the Biblical New Testament was too “woke” and that a magical version that instead ascribes power and blessings to certain of his followers is the real one. For some, the magical version is even Trump himself.

This cult version of Jesus (or Trump) was exactly what the early church shaped its identity by fighting against as heresy. It was variations on this theme that the theology of the Trinity was developed to oppose and St. Augustine developed his theology in works like his “Confessions” and “City of God” and so many of his other writings to challenge.

The actual Jesus of the New Testament, as best as scholars can surmise, the one who in fact formed the basis for the early church and its evolution, was the one best exemplified by the Sermon on the Mount, including the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor,” etc.), his Parables and the record of the events leading to his crucifixion.

As a graduate seminarian myself at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., I studied these matters in depth and was most taken by the theologian Joachim Jeremias, who fame derives most from his scholarship around the Parables of Jesus as they came down to us through the Biblical record and his novel appreciation for how the historic figure of Jesus, speaking Aramaic as he did, most likely referred to God as “abba” in a way in which a child might address his or her father with a familiar expression, more like “daddy” than a formal “father.”

This was in keeping with the notion that one must become like a child to enter the Kingdom of God, that is, to revive a childlike fascination with life and a childlike notion that life offers unlimited opportunity for beauty, love and the cultivation of creative potential.

The mundane conventions of spirit-numbing adult socialized behaviors that accept racism, war and debt-slavery are inevitable stumbling blocks to faith and the appreciation for a universal humanity that he prevailed against with testaments to love, forgiveness and spiritual rebirth.

He stood against the conditioning that turns children into spiritually numb adults accepting the burdens of convention with its racial and social inequalities.

The many varieties of heresies that stood against this valid tradition took the form of cults that almost always lifted the historical Jesus or a new “prophet” out of history, out of true humanity and sacrifice, to posit him in a magical way as one who bestows magical powers on followers.

Today’s Christian Nationalist followers of MAGA are espousing a version of Christianity no different that the Gnostics, Docetists or other cultists did that the early church shaped its identity by vigorously opposing.

In our democracy today, we tend to ignore important differences in faith communities on grounds that persons should be allowed to believe whatever they want. Identifying differences is even considered wrong, and I get that concern.

However, it is in times such as these when a false or heretical version of faith is leading people to make bad decisions by appealing to their lowest sense of themselves and by elevating their prejudices.

Accepting the totality of the teachings and ministry of the Jesus of the Biblical New Testament is a good way to begin safeguarding against the heresy that is the MAGA movement today. 

True religion and science are not at odds. They complement each other because they both seek to understand and appreciate the incredible world into which we have come. Nobody appreciated this better than Einstein himself, one of the most seminal thinkers and considered a preeminent scientist of the last 150 years.

As vast and beyond our imagining this universe actually is, as the Webb  telescope and other observations are revealing now, it is by appreciating that, and affirming the seminal role of love in our lives that there can be the necessary room for both in our hearts and minds.