Wheat and Weeds

C: ‘Gus, they ain’t even Christians.

G: Who do you mean?

C: These Trumpsters. They’ve sold their soul for simple pottage. They vilify refugees, ignore Trump’s obsession with power and his abuse of power—they ignore how rape-y that man is! They prefer “alternative truth” to real truth, they pass on whole cloth information from Neo-Nazis and the Klan—sometimes without even knowing that’s what they are doing…I really think they should be excommunicated.

G: Really?

C: Yes, really. They aren’t Christians, they are following some sort of Christianity fused with Ayn Rand. They have separated themselves from the true faith.

G: This reminds me of a situation I was in, back in North Africa.

C: How so?

G: One of the heresies I combated in my day was Donatism. The Donatists were radical Christians who stayed faithful through the persecutions, when other Christians gave Christian books to the authorities, or renounced the faith—when Bishops even threw pinches of incense on altars to unknown gods—they did not. The Donatists stood strong, they refused to bow the knee to the Emperor or in any way compromise their faith. Many died, or were mutilated, or just excluded from wider society.

C: I was a Donatist, once—or something like that. Back in college when I protested the Iraq war, and the many sins of the Bush administration, I was made to feel like an outcast… in fact my room mate and I re-named ourselves the Red State Rejects, because we could never go back to our very conservative states—we accepted exile rather than kneel to the hyper-patriotism and allegiances to ungodly empire-like policies… by the end I left the country, I was so disgusted with everything.

G: But you were okay with those unmanned flying machines blowing people up in modern North Africa under Obama, and the ongoing surveillance of America citizens only revealed by leaks?

C: Ah… I didn’t like it, but I trusted the guy in a way I never trusted Bush and his handlers… yeah, it’s kinda hypocritical, if Obama had dismantled the Bush security state, Trump would be much less problematic.

G: A hypocrite, you say?

C: Yeah… we all are.

G: Indeed. That’s what the Donatists refused to get. They made it through the persecution, then turned around and excommunicated the unfaithful. They declared all the actions done by unfaithful Christians to be invalid. They even physically attacked those who had been unfaithful in the time of trouble.

C: Well, it’s not like I’m going to Tonya Harding Christians who support Trump, or something.

G: Tonya who?

C: I wouldn’t hurt them.

G: Isn’t breaking relationship with them hurting them? For that matter, isn’t our God a God who works through sinners, who doesn’t destroy evil, but redeems it.

C: Yeah…

G: For that matter, think of all those relationships severed, that mutual redemption and holding to account can’t go on if you slice and dice like that.

C: But, Trump is straight up Anti-Christ!

G: Think of that parable of the wheat and weeds. Weeds are horrible for the garden, but if you try and pull it out, it pulls everything up. You need to give it time—let God sort it out. Resist evil, clearly, and protect those in need, and don’t yourself compromise with evil, but redeem them. Think about it, in 8 years, when there is some space to look at all this, you will have to accept them back into the fold, like the Prodigals they are. If you punish them, I’ll have to come back and defend them from your new Donatism.

“Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”—Matthew 13:30