Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira*
“I beg you, dear brothers, be very watchful of those who cause divisions and hinder the teaching you have learned. Turn away from them! For these people serve their own desires, not our Lord Christ. Soft words and flattery, deceitful hearts of the heedless.” st. This is what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans.
The Bible quote above fits President Jair Bolsonaro like a glove. He rules not for the country, but only for his faction of military, agricultural exporters, urban entrepreneurs and evangelicals. They should pay more attention to the scriptures and ask the Father to prevent them from drinking again from the murky waters of Bolsonarism.
Dear Evangelicals, as your citizen and Catholic (and therefore equally Christian), I implore you not to pretend to say “the captain is my shepherd, I don’t want to”. Even because the President had to repeat in his heart, “Centrão is my pastor, I will lack nothing”. For Bolsonaro, tradition and the religious agenda are just tools to secure votes in the midst of one of the most serious economic crises in history.
Unity, instead of division; hate rather than forgive; igniting the impulse instincts that continue in the barracks instead of democratic temperance. It should be clear that Jair is far from being a Messiah. But Bolsonaro goes even further, reaching the point of incarnating a kind of Antichrist with attitudes diametrically opposed to those preached by the Son of God.
You don’t have to be Christian or of any other religion to realize that the president is violating the mourning of the family of PT member Marcelo Arruda, who was killed by federal criminal police officer Jorge Guaranho at his birthday party in Foz do Iguaçu. According to eyewitnesses, he was the one who shot him after shouting “This is Bolsonaro”. In order not to overlook the work of the Police and Justice, let’s say that there is very strong evidence that this is a politically motivated crime.
Although Bolsonaro did not even offer his condolences to the widow, he called the victim’s brothers, who were sympathizers of the president. The president is therefore a coward who is only interested in publicly defending his reelection. It does this at the death of a citizen. It also diminishes in the face of declared political death, corrupting the remaining pillars of democracy by playing the devil with public accounts and other institutions for the sole purpose of re-election.
Our future Messiah is like his idol, former US President Donald Trump: unfit to serve – good Portuguese, a verb that should be in the heart of any leader, unprepared to serve. In the Catholic tradition, for example, the Pope presents himself as “the servant of God’s servants.” Instead of positioning himself as the nation’s number one servant, Bolsonaro defamed him with a call to confront dissidents and institutions, fueling a civil war that went far beyond rhetoric.
I don’t know how priests and other evangelical leaders in most cases present themselves to their communities of believers: servants of the Lord’s servants or lords of a flock. In any case, if you truly believe in the gospel synthesized in the books of the Bible – the forgiver rather than condemn – abandon the false prophet, my dear Evangelical brethren.
No one here is asking you to vote for Lula – in fact, instead of promoting Bolsonarism, you can direct your votes towards the de facto conservative candidates to reinforce the right to a republic where democracy does not exist.
Also, out of ignorance, I don’t know how a wide variety of evangelical denominations behave in relation to Catholic theologians. I just know that many believers live a life where it would be a sin to read the scriptures hard before they converted. It was the same experience as one of the church doctors, St. Augustine.
Request City of GodAugustine advocates the existence of a profane and divine world that will eventually triumph. Bolsonaro invests in a similar Manichaeism, presenting himself as an advocate of good against the so-called “communist” evil embodied by the PT and institutions, particularly the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
But Saint Augustine appealed to reason, understanding it as an element inseparable from faith. If it’s difficult to see life and political struggle in various hues, rather than the battle of good versus evil, use your intuition to identify what’s useful and separate it from the dark.
Ironically, Cidade de Deus is also the name of one of the most well-known ensembles in Brazil. Dear Evangelicals who voted for Bolsonaro, if you are far from misery or even poverty, be in solidarity with the financially-strapped brothers.
Consider what the Messiah (the true one) would have thought of the false prophet who bears his name: Is he worried about the poor of the world in his day or is he doing it purely for electoral purposes now? Is Jair closer to the hypocrites who condemn Christ or to the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? Don’t use your mind to escape Bolsonaro, my brothers. Faith is enough for you, dear ones.
*Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira He holds a PhD in international relations from Oxford and teaches Faap and MBA courses at FGV.
source: Noticias
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