This week’s Silly Meme, I have determined, is pointless, confused, and almost entirely inaccurate — despite the suspicious absence of spelling errors.

Opposite Of Christ

I’m still unsure of this meme’s intended target and of what it’s trying to convince them. (Click image to see it larger.)

The full text of this meme is as follows:

“Your president is the opposite of Christ. He lies. He steals. He abuses women. He is an adulterer. He has disdain for the poor. He cheats working people. He mocks the disabled. He looks down on other races. He worships wealth. He take money away from the poor. And YOU voted for him! THANK YOU!

Love always,
Satan”

I was immediately curious as to the intended audience and purpose of the meme (it was posted to social media by an ultra-liberal contact who I don’t know in real life). Was it indended for the oft-disparaged “right-wing Christians”? If so, did the meme-maker think this would give them pause? That was my first impression. Then I thought: no one could expect this to be a mind-changer so maybe it was posted for a more liberal audience, with the intent to make them feel better by making fun of Christian supporters of TAINTUS.

As a former evangelical Christian, I can easily imagine what my response would have been to something like this 30 years ago: “None of us are like Christ. All of us are sinners.” This is fundamental, bedrock Christian doctrine. Christ was entirely unique among humankind by his lack of sin, the story goes, the only person ever born without sin and the only person to have never committed a sin. The rest of us are all worms, in need of forgiveness, and dependent entirely upon God’s grace to save us. When I was a Christian, it would have appeared ignorant and in fact stupid to try to point out that another human was full of sin — of course we all are (I would have responded).

(Side note: I can’t be sure, but I am fairly certain that even in my most radical Christian days, I never would have supported or even held my nose and voted for someone so obviously morally bankrupt, erratic, and incompetent as TAINTUS.)

Aside from my hypothetical response above, I think the meme makes several grievous errors of assumption, which I’ll briefly mention below.

1. It assumes self-identified Christians are primarily concerned with emulating the better attributes of the mythical Jesus of Nazareth, later called “Christ”. I don’t think history, or even current events, bears out this assumption. Throughout history, and daily on the news, many of the most well-known Christians are clearly not concerned with mimicking the alleged kindness, meekness, and stability of their movement’s namesake.

It has always been, in fact, the more liberal (and often less-influential) branches of Christianity that are more concerned with this vision of Jesus as a “wise moral teacher”, a kind and helpful friend, a compassionate feeder of the poor.

2. Secondly, the meme’s message makes the psychological error of assuming self-identified Christians will always marry their religious views with their political ones. This ignores the vast capability of humans to compartmentalize. It seems plainly obvious to me, not only via observation but from personal experience, that humans are able to hold one (admirable) view while sitting in the pews and another, entirely incongruent view in the voting booth.

3. For anyone even slightly familiar with Christian doctrine, the meme makes the doctrinal error of assuming “Christ” to be embodied ONLY by the “gentle lamb” we read about in children’s stories. “Love your neighbor as yourself”, he reportedly said. “Turn the other cheek when someone strikes you in the face”, he added. “The meek shall inherit the Earth”, he mistakenly prophesied.

This obtusely ignores the fundamental Christian doctrine that Jesus and YHWH (the God of the Old Testament) are allegedly the same God. The same God who destroyed most of humanity one time because he “regretted” creating them. The same God who purportedly sent his own “chosen people” into Egyptian slavery for several generations — to teach them various inscrutable lessons. The God who tricked his followers for thousands of years by telling them to atone for sin by setting animals on fire and to follow hundreds of arcane and nonsensical rules and regulations, only to twist it at the end by saying none of that mattered; only Jesus was a good enough sacrifice for sin. The same God who allegedly committed adultery with Joseph’s betrothed wife in order to sire his God-Man son (who was also Himself), and who (as the stories go) committed thousands of instances of murder, caused dozens of genocides, engaged in biological warfare against both his enemies and friends, and who promises in the end to burn almost everyone for eternity (for the “sin” of believing the wrong thing or failing to believe).

The God of the Old Testament is actually startlingly like the current president, gaslighting anyone who would listen, changing his story repeatedly while claiming only he was the arbiter of truth, considering women to be intrinsically of less value than men, and ordering his followers to completely distrust (and kill) any non-Israelite tribal groups they came across. (In fact, of the “sins” listed in the meme, the only one on which YHWH differs significantly from TAINTUS is the “disdain for the poor” part. Throughout the Old Testament and the New, YHWH/Jesus always had a soft spot for the less fortunate and regularly compelled his followers to have compassion on them and treat them kindly.)

The final touch of adding “Love, Satan” on the end, as if yet another mythical being actually composed this meme, only added to the silliness and pointlessness of the meme.

In other words, this meme fails on every level except the surprisingly accurate spelling.