“God, it is not that I no longer believe in You. It is that I no longer know what to believe about You.”
— The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton

Spitting on the Nazarene

"Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." — Matthew 8:20

Let's start here: the man they claim to follow was homeless.

Not "between addresses." Not "experiencing housing insecurity while He figures it out." Homeless. A wandering rabbi with dirt under His nails, depending on the kindness of strangers, eating with people respectable society wouldn't touch.

Now look at the bumper sticker. The flag draped over the cross. The AR-15 raffle at the men's ministry breakfast. The pastor who tells you God blesses the nation that arms itself to the teeth and bars the door.

Tell me: when did the homeless Galilean become the mascot for a closed border and a loaded gun?

The Inversion

Christian nationalism isn't just an extra-patriotic flavor of Christianity. It's a completely different belief system that happens to use the same words.

Jesus said the people at the back of the line, the poor, the powerless, the overlooked, go to the front. Christian nationalism says "America First."

Jesus said, "Blessed are you who are poor." (Luke 6:20) Christian nationalism keeps a closer eye on the stock market.

Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:44) A lot of Christian nationalism can't even love the neighbor down the street if they vote differently, pray differently, or love differently.

Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was already among the people (Luke 17:21), not confined to a government building, a political party, or stitched into a flag. Christian nationalism says God's kingdom basically is the country, and you get closer to God by winning elections and locking down the border.

This isn't a stricter version of Christianity. It's a different religion that kept Jesus' name on the label.

"I Was Hungry"

"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in." — Matthew 25:42-43

Read that again. Slowly.

A stranger and you did not invite me in.

Now go look at the rhetoric about migrants. About refugees. About families fleeing violence, poverty, or disaster. Listen to the sermons that call compassion for the stranger "globalism" and suspicion of the stranger "biblical wisdom."

The details change depending on the decade, the country, or the political party in power. The target changes. The language changes. But the question Jesus asks never changes:

What did you do when the stranger showed up at your door?

Jesus didn't say "the stranger, but only if they came here legally and learned English first." He didn't qualify it. He didn't build a vetting process. He said I was the stranger. And you turned your back.

When a politician holds up a Bible in one hand and signs an order to separate families with the other, that's not a contradiction they're unaware of. That's a flex. That's saying: we know what the book says, and we don't care, because the book was never the point. Power was the point.

The Sword They Picked Up

"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." — Matthew 26:52

In the garden, with soldiers closing in, with His own life on the line, Jesus told His friend to put the weapon down. He healed the wound it caused. He surrendered to violence rather than meet it with more violence.

Now picture the mural. Jesus, jacked, draped in an American flag, cradling a rifle, eyes locked on some unseen threat. It's not satire. People hang it in their living rooms. They believe it.

That image isn't a misunderstanding of Jesus. It's a replacement of Jesus with a totem of the very empire He refused to bow to. They've taken the man who told Peter to sheath his blade and handed him a tactical loadout. They've taken the man who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9), and made Him the patron saint of "good guys with guns."

You don't get to keep the name and swap out everything He stood for. That's not devotion. That's grand theft Jesus.

Whitewashed, Again

"You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." — Matthew 23:24

Watch what gets people fired up, and what gets a shrug.

A trans kid just existing gets legislative hearings and "save our children" rallies.

Cutting healthcare for poor families gets a shrug.

A drag brunch gets protested by guys carrying assault rifles on the sidewalk.

A war that kills children overseas gets "thoughts and prayers," or applause.

That's the camel. It's always been the camel. Not the people they've decided to be scared of, the stuff they've decided not to look at. The greed. The cruelty written into policy. Being fine with violence overseas and indifference at home, while all the outrage gets aimed at whoever is smallest and safest to pick on.

Jesus didn't say "the small stuff is the real problem, folks, grab your tweezers." He said you're choking on a camel and calling it holiness.

The Cross Was Not a Symbol of Comfort

Here's the part that should stop everyone cold:

Jesus wasn't killed by atheists, or by some godless empire that hated religion. He was killed by the religious leaders of his own people, working together with the Roman government, because his idea of God was too dangerous to the system they'd built together.

He threatened the religious establishment's money and authority. He threatened the cozy deal between faith and political power.

So when Christian nationalism builds another cozy deal between faith and political power, when it turns God into a mascot for one political side, the cross into a team logo, and the church into a wing of the government, that's not following Jesus.

That's rebuilding the exact system that killed him.

What's Left

If your faith needs a flag to feel legitimate, it's not faith. It's nationalism with incense.

If your gospel has more room for guns than for refugees, you've swapped Bibles with somebody.

If the loudest thing about your Christianity is what you're against, and the quietest thing is who you've fed, sheltered, or sat with in their pain, you've missed Him completely.

The Nazarene is still out there. Still homeless, still with the outcasts, still flipping tables in whatever temple has turned itself into a marketplace of power.

The question isn't whether He's coming back to judge the nations.

The question is whether He'd recognize the people holding His name like a weapon, or whether He'd look at them the way He looked at the whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23:27), and weep.

Take what you need. Leave the rest. And for God's sake, put the sword down.