Perhaps you know the parable. How do you boil a frog alive?
Don’t throw the frog into boiling water. It will jump out. Rather, turn a stove burner on to low heat. Fill a kettle with water at room temperature.
Put your wiggling, green frog into the kettle. Set the kettle onto the burner. Wait…
Supposedly, as the water temperature slowly rises, the frog – being a cold-blooded creature – will enjoy the sauna without alarm. Eventually, the cooperative frog allows itself to be cooked alive without ever objecting to the rising water temperature.
I have enough of a conscious that I’ve never tested the truth of this parable (have you?), but it serves as a popular warning against the dangerous allurements of compromising one’s conscience. How many compromises does it take before principle and morality become waterlogged labels tossed by deceased idealists into the world’s pragmatic stew called “the ends justify the means?”
I don’t know. Maybe Michael Gerson could tell us.
Gerson, now a columnist with the Washington Post, has become one of 
president Trump’s most vocal, conservative critics. And I admire him for taking up the cause of repeating out loud that this president has no clothes.
Gerson prints what few other Republicans are willing to say out loud (except behind closed doors). He appears to be working as a conservative conscience (in a kinda, sorta way) for an otherwise fetid Republican party that misplaced its public service conscience years ago – undoubtedly lost in the fancy parlor of some corporate contributor.
A graduate of Wheaton College, Gerson is noteworthy because he claims the mantle of “evangelical Christian” while openly condemning the boot-licking, brown-nosing antics of those religious-right leaders and their millions of followers who boast about their elevated status on Trump’s White House guest list.
In this regard, Gerson certainly has his head screwed on straight. Perhaps he learned a lesson or two from his own time of service in the Bush White House.
Gerson was chief speech writer for George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. From 2000 to 2006 he was also a White House Senior Policy Analyst and a member of Bush’s White House Iraq Group.
The primary purpose of the WHIG was to advance the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld plan “to sell” the American public on the imaginary threat of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD program. In other words, Gerson was on the president’s marketing team charged with candy-coating one of the most catastrophic, illegal, immoral wars in the history of American foreign policy.
Everyone on that team knew exactly what they were doing.
Here is Paul Waldman’s assessment (in a very cogent article published in
This Week) of the work accomplished by Gerson and his associates in the WHIG:
“What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history.”
That’s what Gerson helped to accomplish.
Gerson is widely regarded as the author of the “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” fear-mongering metaphor that became the most effective rhetorical trick used by Bush officials in promoting the Iraq War. (Check out Gerson’ Wikipedia page for some interesting anecdotes told by his fellow speech-writers [with citations]).
I have always wondered what happened to Gerson’s Christian conscience
during those crucial years in the Bush White House.
In 2012 Gerson gave a public lecture at Calvin College. I was there. As he often does, Gerson talked about the formative influences of Charles Colson and Senator Jack Kemp, two Christian leaders with whom he worked closely as a young man. He credits them for positively shaping his Christian social and political conscience. He also talked briefly about his years with George W. Bush, but had precious little to say about his work in the White House.
When it came time for the audience to ask questions, I took my place in the short line forming behind a public microphone. I don’t recall my exact words, but this is essentially what I asked Mr. Gerson:
“You have talked a lot about how your Christian conscience has directed you through your life in politics. Yet, your political career includes working for an administration that legalized and carried out the torture of other human beings. Your White House also violated our Constitution with its warrantless, mass surveillance of the American people. When asked, the president you worked for knowingly lied to us about that fact.
“How did you, how do you, reconcile all of that with your ‘Christian conscience?’ How could you do that? What do you have to say?”
Gerson’s answer was a disheartening example of double-speak and evasion. He never answered my question, not really. And I was surprised that he didn’t have a more polished response. Certainly, he had been asked this question before?
I have no idea if Mr. Gerson has ever answered that question within himself. If he felt ashamed or had experienced any regret over his years of deliberate, knowing collusion in clearing a path for one of the greatest American crimes of the 20th century, he gave no indication of it.
Though I strongly disagree with almost all of Gerson’s policy positions, I am pleased to see him take up the pen and use his position with the Washington Post to shed some sensible, moral – perhaps even somewhat Christian – daylight onto the sweaty, belching, obnoxious, moral turpitude that is the Trump administration.
Apparently, the water temperature in this current White House is too hot even for Michael Gerson. But his previous ability to flourish at criminally high temperatures causes me to bite my tongue as others commend him for his Christian cajones.
My understanding of Christianity says that redemption first requires confession of and repentance from sin. Public sins demand public confession. We may have learned a little about Gerson’s tolerance of the current heat in Washington, D.C.
I am not convinced that his current opposition to Donald Trump tells us anything at all about Gerson’s Christian discipleship.
I am still waiting to hear a public confession of his past, political sins.
balance in what it means to live in this country at this time as a follower of Jesus. Having just recently retired from parish ministry… I’m aware of how often I waffled, especially in my preaching. There are times when I experience guilt and wish I could begin again to deal in a better way with the influences of congregants. And then there are those times when I’m grateful that I made it through without getting kicked out. The events of this past week put me into an even deeper depression. However, your insights and reminders have helped me immensely. Again, thank you!! And, please, keep writing. David”
these two deities.
The Social Contract (1762), to the centrality of civil religion in the modern nation-state, he emphasized the civic dangers of Christianity. In fact, he believed – rightly, in my opinion – that the gospel of Jesus Christ, when embraced by true believers, posed the single greatest threat to the long-term survival of any modern nation-state. He even went so far as to insist that the Roman Catholic church (the only form of Christianity he knew) be outlawed if the nation-state hoped to survive.
loyalties.
We would shun idolatrous ceremonies demanding that we “pledge allegiance” to a flag.
word “worship.”
words “praise God” over and over again, actually have no connection at all to the Biblical notion of praise.
divine but to honor him as someone able to do great things (like heal their leprosy, Matthew 8:2).
applied to the cultic services of the priesthood. For the Old Testament, leitourgia is the specifically ritual-oriented tasks performed exclusively by priests.
“’This Is an Attempt to Intimidate Certain Voices’: Group Says Meetings Between Trump, Faith Leaders a Violation of Law”
Advisory Committee Act, 5 U.S.C. app. 2. It is clear that the President’s Evangelical Advisory Board is doing substantive work with the Trump Administration behind closed doors—without any sunlight for the public to understand how and why decisions are being made. We respectfully request that the Advisory Board cease meeting and providing advice to the President unless and until it fully complies with FACA, and that you produce to us certain documents relating to the Advisory Board.
expand. He was a rabid hawk who seemed incapable of feeling anything like empathy for the untold masses of people killed, maimed and displaced by American military adventurism around the world.
deep conscience. But that won’t surprise anyone who has read his books.
are also 
appropriations bill (itself a moral travesty we will discuss another day), which would have ended US support for Saudi atrocities, went down to defeat. Take a moment to watch the Senator’s 
specifically, they contain stories about the ways various churches are dealing with concealed carry laws in their states and whether they allow guns in church. (You can read my previous posts about gun control and guns in church 
conference room. At the end of his anti-Muslim rant, the visiting pastor/speaker boasted about the fact that he and all his church elders carried their guns to every church activity, both inside and out of the church building, in order “to protect their flock.”
protect themselves and their families if an armed intruder enters the church. But with the new [concealed carry] law in place, who will know if the person is an armed intruder or an armed visitor?…All visitors are now scrutinized, with every visitor being a potential threat. At the same time, to demonstrate their enthusiasm for the new law, some churches are posting signs that say — as an act of outreach — ‘Guns Welcome Here.’