It’s taken me a long time, but I think I’ve finally found the truth that will truly set me free.

After all these years watching so many of my fellow Americans convert while pushing him away, I think I’m ready to invite MAGA Jesus into my heart.

It’s not inspiration, inner conviction, or divine revelation that has led me to this holy conversion moment; it’s mainly just fatigue.

I’m tired.

Caring about people is exhausting; waking up every morning and having empathy for someone who isn’t me, let alone someone who doesn’t even look like me, think like me, vote like me, talk like me, worship like me.It’s downright wearying trying to actually live all that Gospel Jesus stuff: loving the least, serving others, turning the other cheek, living humbly, tending to the sick and the poor, and praying for my enemies.I didn’t realize that being a peacemaker, a neighbor-lover, and a Good Samaritan would be such thankless, taxing, costly business, and honestly, it’s worn me the hell out.

I was beginning to think maybe I needed to jump ship altogether; that maybe Christianity wasn’t for me, until I found MAGA Jesus, and he saved me from a life of sacrifice, humility, and selflessness.

MAGA Jesus isn’t half as demanding as Gospel Jesus is.

In fact, all things considered, he requires very little from me: a quick magic prayer and cherry-picked scripture in my bio, in exchange for a permanent Get Out of Hell Free card, a life of unrepentant privilege, and the right to condemn the humanity around me as much as I please. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

With MAGA Jesus running things, I’ll be able to focus on saving souls for the next life, which means I won’t have to be concerned with what befalls people in this one all that much anymore. Their poverty, their adversity, and their suffering are really none of my concern.

Oh sure, I’ll still be able to take enough interest in people’s personal existence to condemn them for the country they come from or the bathroom they use or having the gall to want to marry the person they love—but beyond that I don’t have any pressing interest one way or the other. Someone else’s life (at least as far as their pain or their needs) is none of my business.

Republican Jesus also frees me up from worrying about the planet heating up, or the coral reefs dying, or the honeybees disappearing. I can chalk that all up to a “groaning creation” that is well above my pay grade, and simply live with relative abandon, consuming and wasting to my heart’s delight, knowing the destruction of the planet will bring a Divine rest.

As a disciple of MAGA Jesus, I won’t have to welcome refugees or immigrants or outsiders, those fleeing war, oppression, and sickness, the way annoying Gospel Jesus insisted. I can just tell them all to go to hell, or back where they came from.I can spend and acquire and hoard as much as I want and not give it a second thought, because MAGA Jesus is a heartless, capitalist deity who wouldn’t dare tell me that I can’t serve both God and money the way Gospel Jesus would.And all the annoying death, suffering, and violence outside my door? I can merely blame it all on the sins of a fallen world, get me some of that gun money, while offering up some copied-and-pasted “thoughts and prayers” platitudes, and consider myself off the hook.

The really great thing about worshiping MAGA Jesus is that I’ll still get to call myself a Christian, which will be super helpful. Sure, I’ll have to adopt a white, affluent, American, gun-loving, gay-hating Savior, which, admittedly, will take some getting used to, but from what I’ve seen from so many of my friends and family members, it’s easier than it sounds.

If I follow MAGA Jesus faithfully, in no time, I’ll be harboring pedophiles, banning books, shunning refugees, worshipping America, and telling the poor and the hurting to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without having to worry about whether or not they even have boots.

I figure, I’ve given this Gospel Jesus thing a good go of it. For well over half a century, I’ve been tirelessly working that whole “love your neighbor as yourself”, compassionate, generous program, and what has it gotten me? All I have to show for my labors are an experience of diverse community, an understanding of lives that are different from my own, the knowledge of humanity’s commonality, and the hope of leaving the planet a little kinder than when I found it. Not exactly a golden parachute, and surely not profitable or easy.

It isn’t as if I’ll be totally exempt from empathy either. Of course, I’ll still get to care for my spouse and my kids and my parents and my friends, my kind, but beyond that, giving a greater damn will be at my discretion. Anyone else’s well-being, healthcare, security, or future (especially those beyond our borders) won’t have to be a priority anymore.

I’m sure I’ll miss my old religion from time to time; the joy and kindness and the mercy, but I definitely won’t miss the work.

I’m looking forward to finally having a God who will work for me instead of the other way around.

I think I’ll finally get everything that I, as a straight, white, Christian, deserve, for a change.

I believe MAGA Jesus will make my Christianity great (or at least easier) again.

I once was blind, but now I think I see...

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