St. MTG

She's just about come to the point where her name can be invoked simply by way of her initials--MTG. She's not quite risen to the level of a woman who would have been her nemesis--AOC, or the new czar of American health, RFK. She might have, had she not had what she considers a true Damascus Road experience, at least that's how she might well characterize it, or so says Robert Draper of the NY Times in a highly discussed and long feature article earlier this week.

The intent is to help an American public understand her, someone who was the captain of the cheerleaders for Donald Trump ever since she came on the scene. She was not only an advocate, she was an accomplice. Today, she's on his hit list and was heard on her phone, in public, berating her in the savage rhetoric he's known for. What happened?

The answer that Draper gives is fascinating in an eternal sense because Draper claims--via her testimony--that MTG met that Damascus Road experience during the commemoration of the life of Charley Kirk, yet another Trump champ and conservative hero, who was gunned down a few months ago.

Draper says MTG explained it this way. Mrs. Kirk stood up and said, among other things, that she forgave her husband's killer. She did so because it was the Christian thing to do--forgive one's enemies. Next to take the podium was our beloved President who quite forthrightly told the audience that unlike Mrs. Kirk, she didn't forgive Charley's killer, but hated him--and mostly them because our dear President has rarely backed away from a friendly conspiracy theory.

When MTG heard those two diametrically opposed positions, she shuddered deeply because she knew that one of them was the "Christian" way, while the other--hate speech from the Pres--was not.

That was absolutely the worst statement,” Greene wrote to me [Draper] in a text message months after the memorial service. And the contrast between Erika Kirk and the president was clarifying, she added. “It just shows where his heart is. And that’s the difference, with her having a sincere Christian faith, and proves that he does not have any faith.

That difference made MTG shudder because it reflected on her own faith, and her own contribution to what she and others call our "toxic political culture." She looked inward and saw her own toxicity, her own sin, to be more traditionally theological. She knew she'd been wrong and had to change. “After Charlie died," she wrote a friend, "I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”

Wow! That, my friends, is a story, in Christian terms, a testimony.

I have a bit of a better sense of what it took for the disciples to accept Saul, their fierce enemy, as Paul, servant of the Lord. It's hard to think of someone more loyal to the whole MAGA fantasy that the blond bombshell from Georgia, and suddenly I have to look to her as Mother Theresa?

That's tough sledding, even in a winter like ours.

Almost immediately, she quit the House, resigned from her political position. She also gave up her sustaining family in the MAGA movement. Almost immediately, her life was threatened, as was the life of her son, a college student.

For a ton of reasons, her story is a block-buster. Might it push other evangelicals to reconsider their intense loyalty to the Donald? Will MTG now quickly disappear, given that her ability to generate headlines is compromised? Can she be believed?--after all, it's the old "come-to-Jesus" story. Is she a harbinger of things to come?--might there be more MTGs? 

And there's this: Paul's Damascus Road experience was no dodge. It was authentic, something believers recognize. 

After all, miracles happen--just ask us.