The Irony Board: Rev. Graham and the Democratic Convention

Rev. Franklin Graham lamented the absence of God at the Democratic Convention, an indication that he couldn't have been paying attention.

There were numerous references to God, to faith, to love, to empathy and mercy; there were religious organizations represented; there were many references to the deep and abiding faith of Joe Biden, a faith demonstrated in his empathy for others, in how he listened to, ministered to, counseled, helped, and prayed with others, throughout his career.

And, there is, of course, the well-known history of Biden's personal life, losing his wife and daughter in a car accident, losing his son to brain cancer, and how it was his faith that got him through those tragedies. Ignoring all of that smacks of a person who has a specific message he wants to deliver, but won't come right out and say it.

Yet. I'm sure he's saving it for next week.

Biden's campaign theme is that we are in a "battle for the soul of our country," something about which he spoke quite eloquently as he accepted the nomination, and something that has been set aside during the current administration in favor of more worldly goals, as we know.

Graham also shared the Ten Commandments as a reminder of the standards to which we are held, as a yardstick against which the Dems were measured, and in Graham's eyes, apparently failed. The irony is rich.

Think of them, the Ten Commandments, as you contemplate the current occupant of the White House, a man upon whom Graham has heaped praise, prayer, and blessings.

• Donald Trump stole from a charity, (one of his children ALSO stole from HIS charity) and was given restrictions should he want to be involved with a charity again. Among the ways he used the stolen money? A portrait of himself, the only image he worships.
• He cheated on his first two wives, each wife with the next, and with others, some of whom he paid for their silence; he bragged about sexually assaulting other women and lamented his failures in that regard; prowled backstage at beauty pageants hoping to see young women in varying states of undress, claiming that as his right; and was at least friendly with a sexual predator or two.
• He assaults his neighbors - all of us, really - with false witness, with patently absurd lies, with hostility, and with a profound lack of empathy; mercy is word not in his vocabulary. He mocks the sick, the frail, the disabled, the dying, and those who do not share his exalted opinion of himself. (The examples are legion; citing one or two would be absurd.)
• He takes the Lord's name in vain every time he mentions it, because he is a man without a shred of religious faith. He mocks the faithful even more than others; calls those who pray for him as the holder of the highest office in the land liars; and accuses those who are steadfast in their own faith of being faithless, or worse, of being like him: a person who uses the concept of faith as a way to advance his own interests, or as a weapon against others.
• He uses the faithful, and accepts their benevolence, their prayers, their laying on of hands, the same way he must have made promises as a child not to steal a favored toy from a neighbor - with one hand behind his back, fingers crossed, negating the promise of the faith placed in him - refusing it, truth be told, as if it's meaningless and beneath him.
• He used someone else's Bible as a prop. He lied about belonging to a church. He said the Bible was his favorite book. We know that is a lie, for it doesn't mention him by name.
• He attacks those who have more than he has - more money, more joy, more love, more purpose, more heart, more empathy. By so attacking, he demonstrates just how much he covets all that the others have, and all that is lacking in his own life.
• He places himself above all, before all, and bows before no one. He worships mere mention of his name, the almighty dollar, the almighty ratings, as if those three things are the measure of a man. Those things? They are the measure only of a megalomaniac. They are out of place in the heart, mind, and words of a person of faith.
• He is the graven image upon which his eyes rest most comfortably: his name on a clothing label; on the side of a building, writ in gold; carved in stone on an embassy wall; emblazoned in countless gaudy hotels, his golden club, his golf carts, and more; his giant signature, held up to the cameras for all to see, to bow to, to venerate, no matter how nonreligious, how faithless, how merciless are the words above it.

Tell me again, where is God missing?