Boebert compares herself to Jesus. What does Jesus have to say about that?
On Sunday, the TBN host Mike Huckabee interviewed Lauren Boebert on Newsmax. Huckabee was his usual oily self. And he was not shy about slathering his co-religionist with smarm. He simpered over the pistol-polisher and gushed that she was,
“not afraid to speak openly about your faith and how it defines you.”
Adding, "You're not timid, and you're not afraid to let people know that you are a Christian believer and that that's what gives you your core values. Do you find that people sometimes are wanting you to say just tone it down a little bit, Congresswoman? Just tone it down. Do you hear that?"
Boebert displayed no false modesty as she hoisted herself onto Jesus’ pedestal and declared they were coequal victims of people who would have them dial it back. As she told Huckabee,
You know, I think people would love if I would tone it down. But, you know, we had our Lord Jesus certainly didn't tone it down for anyone. We had the Apostles who carried this message of the Gospel and even the leaders in their days, they said, you know, it's fine, you can pray but just don't do it in the name of Jesus."
Boebert is not someone who polishes her sentences or strings her thoughts together in a coherent manner. So you can be forgiven if you’re not exactly sure what she was trying to say — especially towards the end. But she goes on to make her meaning clearer (a bit),
And now here we are in another cycle of cancel culture but this is nothing new," she remarked. "Cancel culture has been around since the beginning of time. Cain canceled Abel. We had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that were thrown into the fiery furnace. King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to cancel them but there stood another in the midst of them and He was the son of God. And then they tried to cancel Jesus but you can't cancel God!"
She reminds me of those uneducated people who think that if they can memorize some long words they will sound intelligent. But then they invariably use them in the wrong context - when a shorter word would have been better anyway. So it is not surprising that she fails to grasp that her story doesn’t make the point she thinks it does.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three Jewish lads who, in the Book of Daniel, refused to bow to a golden image of King Nebuchadnezzar. The pissed-off king threw them in a fiery pit. There they walked about — unburnt — with a fourth person, who observers reported to be the son of God. This so impressed the king that he spared them and even promoted them to high official positions. Which reasonable people cannot consider a ‘cancel’.
And you have to think that King Nebuchadnezzar seems a lot like Trump - with the golden images and what not. And Boebert has no problem bowing down to him.
And besides, what can the call for book burning, library censorship, and whitewashing American history be called if not ‘cancel culture’?
It would be instructive at this point to have Jesus for his opinion on self-aggrandizing (spoiler alert, he was against)
As reported in Matthew 23:12, he said, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
A sentiment that is also covered in Luke 18:14 “For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
In Matthew 5:5, Jesus reiterates that blowhards ultimately do not win. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
And once again, in Matthew 6:6, Jesus makes his feelings about conspicuous religiosity clear, “But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees from the hidden place will reward you.”
And he also ruled that praying while hating liberals is a non-starter. “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Mark 11:24-25
And famously, Jesus was against the hypocrisy of bigots, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” John 8:3
If Boebert wants to go where Jesus leads, he made it clear that he had conditions. “Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Matthew 19:21
And I am unaware of any verse in the Bible where Jesus encourages people to practice the Second Amendment rights and carry guns. And the one time we hear about a disciple, Simon Peter, carrying a sword, Jesus tells him to put it away because people who live by the sword die by the sword.