Beware 'false Christs,' who proclaim their own goodness
Beware any man who calls himself good. Charlie Crist's self-idolatry is dangerous. Of course the media won't treat it that way.
“The choice is crystal clear: He’s bad, we’re good.” — Charlie Crist, Democratic challenger in the Florida governor’s race, on Gov. Ron DeSantis
“At that time if anyone says to you ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect — if that were possible.” — Jesus, in Mark 13:21-22
Because we are blessed, this week the face of the false Christ was Charlie Crist.
If we are favored, the false Christs of our time will all appear like Charlie: old, sweaty, and lacking in charisma.
Crist, a former Florida governor himself, is never one to pass on a homonym. He sees two in his race: DeSantis is “DeSatan,” and Crist is Christ. Sadly, he said this himself, unprompted.
Crist doesn’t control the levers of government anymore. Until his resignation late last month to run against DeSantis, Crist was one of 435 congressmen.
There will be no signs or miracles to deceive the elect. Not delivered by Crist’s hands, anyway.
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good? No one is good — except God alone.” — A young boy asks Jesus how to earn eternal life, and Jesus answers him. Mark 10:17-18
The timing of Crist’s remarks could not have been worse for the Florida media.
Crist’s self-idolatry came as the Miami Herald was preparing a hit piece on DeSantis. The governor had told believers to “put on the full armor of God,” and the Herald found a few alleged Christians to pretend this was scary talk. They did this by avoiding entirely the text of Ephesians 6.
Brian Kaylor, one of the Herald’s sources, expanded on his concerns in a blog post.
DeSantis, he warned, “uses scripture to demonize — or perhaps worse, devilize — his political opponents.”
“As a Baptist minister, I’m appalled by his rhetoric that co-opts my faith’s sacred text to push dangerous politics that threatens our democracy,” Kaylor wrote.
The threat posed by Crist’s “Christ” talk is clear, if we follow Kaylor’s own words.
“Depicting the other party as inherently evil and your own party as on God’s side distorts how one views elections and our democratic processes,” Kaylor wrote in the blog about DeSantis. “One doesn’t compromise with the devil. Nor does one just sit back and let the devil take over.”
Kaylor has not written about Crist’s self-idolatry. But to his credit, Kaylor has written about how Democrats, including Crist, profane the pulpit with their political rhetoric.
Jesus never would have called himself good, and even corrected a child who tried to saddle him with that word. Call no man reverend.
Crist, perhaps unfamiliar with the passage in Mark 10, saw no problem. Beware any man who believes himself good.
If the “armor of God” is scary talk, so much worse is talk of “good and bad” and attempts to liken one’s self to Christ and his opposition to Satan.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for The Herald to acknowledge these words as “dangerous.” They’re playing a long game that, they hope, will keep Ron DeSantis from the presidency.
But if actual danger or “political violence” were their concern, they’d see it too in Crist’s words, not exclusively in Bible quotes.
For now, we are blessed. False Christs won’t always be this unconvincing.