Pope Francis and Donald Trump engaged in a war of words Thursday over Trump’s plan to build a border wall.
As if the presidential race wasn’t already argumentative enough, Pope Francis decided to join the fray long enough to suggest that Republican front-runner Donald Trump is not behaving like a Christian if he truly plans to deport illegal immigrants and build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico:
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”
Trump raised eyebrows fairly early into the campaign when he talked about building a wall to keep Mexicans out of the country and raised those eyebrows even higher when he then said he would make Mexico pay for it.
Francis was quick to add, “We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.”
Trump wasted little time responding to the Pontiff’s remarks, first calling them “disgraceful” and “unbelievable,” and then making a bold declaration about a future we should all hope never happens:
“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President.”
I’d like to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt, but frankly, I have to side with Trump on this particular skirmish: I don’t like it when religious leaders question the faith of public figures.
I think it’s one thing to talk about whether ideas measure up to Biblical standards. But it’s a very different thing to take someone’s idea and extrapolate from that notion that the person who presented it cannot be Christian.
The Bible reminds us, after all, that we who are Christians are anything but perfect; none of us, therefore, is necessarily going to say or think things that are 100% in line with Biblical concepts or Christ’s teachings.
A candidate’s religion isn’t particularly important to me. In fact, I’ve found as I get older that the candidates endorsed by the most prominent conservative pastors tend to be candidates that I disagree with. I’m sure someone could make a compelling argument that every candidate in this year’s race has at least one idea that goes against Biblical teaching.
The talk should be on the ideas, not the person who presents them, no matter what party or which faith to which they claim to belong.
