"Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness" (Evangelicals For Trump Edition)

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.  “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.  “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Hold on. So you're saying that you'll give me the one thing I want most of all and all I need to do to get it is to compromise all the values I proclaimed so strongly up until now?”
The devil answered, “Seriously? I mean YES! Of course! After all I'm very well known for always telling the truth and never making outrageous promises I have no intention of keeping! I always keep up my end of a bargain, ask anyone I've ever done business with!”
 Jesus pensively mused, “Well on the one hand I've always insisted that even the slightest hint of compromise is completely unacceptable... On the other hand, I get the one thing I care about most so it won't matter much right?”
The devil answered excitedly, “Exactly! I will probably definitely maybe give you the thing you want most and all it will cost you is the moral high ground for, well, ever. Fantastic deal, none better, when it comes to the art of the deal, I pretty much wrote the book!”
 Then Jesus exclaimed “It's a deal!”
Then the devil departed and said, “Well that was easier than I thought... ”

Why Evangelical Support for Donald Trump Makes Total Sense

The fact that Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of a major party is baffling to people all over the world but somehow even more baffling to Christian folk all over (US included) is his support amongst Evangelical Christians.  I mean here you have the literal incarnation of the bad guy in every one of Jesus' parables and he doesn't just have their support, he has their enthusiastic support!  While on the one hand he can't seem to stop doing wrong, to them he can do no wrong!  I think I can clear that up though.  To a lifelong student of White Western Evangelical Christianity this really shouldn't be all that baffling.  When you think about it, it makes utter and complete sense.

But that's only if anyone is still around to see 2024...

See, in Donald Trump Evangelicals have someone they can treat the way they've been treating God all their lives, so of course they're going to worship him.  Think about it, he says one thing and then later says the complete opposite.  As his followers they then insist that doesn't count and that what he really meant was because and also there's no contradiction here, all these alleged contradictions are just being exaggerated by his enemies who hate him and want to distract from all the good he's doing!  See? They can treat Trump the way they've been treating the Bible their whole lives.  In a way, they've been training for the Trump candidacy since Sunday School!

That's why it doesn't matter how many terrible things Trump says.  You can quote him all you like, you'll have more luck trying to convince Evangelicals to cancel the rib cookoff by quoting Leviticus.  

Or rather, you'll have exactly the same amount of luck.  For exactly the same reasons.