Incoming freshman Representative, Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)
set Christian tongues a clucking last Thursday with her stated intent to
“go in and impeach the motherfucker” - referring with that vulgarity to to President Donald Trump. Many Christians shake their heads and wag their
fingers, lamenting the decrease in decency, and the collapse of civility, and et centers
But me… I just wonder if Jesus himself might not have called
President Trump a “motherfucker” or something similar.
Hear me out.
I know, of course, that Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) and the apostle Paul’s advice to “…let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth,” (Ephesians
4:29) would seem to negate any chance that Jesus might use such an uncouth
epithet, but I still think there is a case to be made.
Look for instance at the fiery invective that Jesus used against his enemies, the Pharisees, in Matthew 23 – particularly verse 33: “"You
snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
(NIV). We’ve probably read this verse
enough time to buff away the jagged edge of these words. So we need to remind ourselves just how uncivil Jesus was sometimes.
Here Jesus is describing his enemies as snakes, as the children of vipers. In the
context of that culture and that time, Jesus was condemning them as disgusting and defiling children of the devil
(that ancient serpent – Revelation 20:2). This is no polite ecumenical discourse. This is bitter polemic. This is
nasty partisanship. This is abusive, ad
hominem attack. It may not have been “motherfucker,” but it was just as
nasty.
We like to keep our Jesus clean. We like to keep him out of
the gutter – and to keep the gutter out of his mouth, but Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees was, at times, quite ugly. we tend to forget (willful, perhaps) that “[p]olite ecumenical dialogue
among different religious groups is a happy modern invention (Meier 338).” And
since the division between the two is often indistinguishable, it’s true of
political discourse as well.
Would Jesus have called President Trump a Motherfucker? I
don’t know. In Luke 13:23 he called Herod Antipas a “fox” (more specifically a “vixen”)
– and it wasn’t because Jesus thought Herod was handsome or clever. It was a pointed, and
insulting criticism on par with calling him
a poser, jackass.
Would Jesus call President Trump a Motherfucker? I don’t know – but I think a
case can be made that he might.
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew Vol. III: Companions and
Competitors. Doubleday. New York,
New York. 2001.
