McLean Bible Church is a sprawling campus just west of Tyson’s Corner, VA. It’s main auditorium accommodates several thousand congregants, and is full most Sunday services. Recently retired Lon Solomon was the mega-Church’s pastor for several decades and is as articulate and charismatic an orator as one will find; seldom is the sermon he delivers not sufficient to make the listener ponder deeply its themes. Unlike many garish and vexatious leaders of large evangelical congregations, Pastor Solomon is humble in pursuit of his aims, content to talk about Jesus and the church’s mission to spread his word, and ever vigilant to avoid any circumstance that could compromise his duty.
Indeed, Pastor Solomon is an artist, his canvas the Bible. The weekly messages he crafted integrated scripture with real life in a way the newly introduced and lifetime follower alike could appreciate. He actually has it down to a formula. After parsing several pages of either the Old or New Testament, Solomon would ask “our most important question.” He then led a loud unified “So What!” To which he responded with all the ways words transcribed by ancients affect us today, intersecting with basic routines. Yes, Lon Solomon is exactly the kind of godly, incorruptible man any church hopes and prays they will be lucky enough to have lead their godly pilgrimage….. He’s also a fanatic.
Solomon can best be described as a biblical hyper-purist; he believes both testaments to be “perfect” publications, that is, every word on their pages is true. After all, were one utterance to be false or misleading, how could there be faith the whole enterprise wasn’t just a long sequence of falling dominoes? Jonah and the whale? You bet. The world created in seven days? How else could it have happened? Stonings and what not for otherwise innocuous activities in the Old Testament? Tough love, everything to God’s purpose. While Solomon goes to great pains to validate the New Testament’s historical accuracy, often delving into archeology to confirm the steps of Jesus, he exhibits and expects full faith toward the more sensational aspects of the Old Testament’s guidance, lest one be tempted down the road toward heresy.
Perhaps most controversial about Lon Solomon is his ardent membership in “Jews For Jesus.” Raised Jewish with full semetic lineage, Solomon inspired the wrath of his parents when he accepted Jesus as his savior. Yet and still, that doesn’t half cover much of the disdain he receives from the greater Hebrew community for essentially labeling them unrepentant sinners, unwilling to recognize Jesus Christ as Messiah. Asked how he feels about such visceral emotions toward him, Solomon merely shrugs it off and asserts “I am only the messenger.” His mission is first and foremost to save souls from damnation; he can do no less.
The race for Congress in Michigan’s 11th district is labeled a toss up. Lena Epstein, an unabashed GOP Trumpie, believes turnout will decide things. On that score she had VP Mike Pence in town Monday to motivate the base out of their recliners. With news of eleven Jewish innocents gunned down by a Nazi in Pittsburgh gripping the nation, beginning the event with a prayer for the fallen was mandatory. Bloomfield Hills has a number of synagogues – including the one Epstein later made clear she has assiduously attended throughout her life – led by Rabbis one could assume would have obliged to offer thoughts and prayers for the fallen if asked. Or maybe not, given who was asking. Regardless, Loren Jacobs was selected, he of the “Messianic Jewish” persuasion, that is “Jews for Jesus.”
The Trump Administration is notoriously indifferent to bad optics. Yet and still, the stunning absurdity of a “Rabbi” beseeching the heavens on behalf of Jews victimized within the sanctum of their own synagogue, even as his guiding theological tenet maintains all of the slain are headed to hell’s depths, assaults the senses.
It’s a good bet Mike Pence would be enrapt by Lon Solomon’s preaching. Certainly there is no daylight between their respective takes on Christianity, what they see as nonnegotiable duties for furthering its mission. Perhaps most importantly, neither is overly concerned with recognizing where the line for church ends and state begins. And make no mistake…. all religions are not equal. Solomon’s oratorical gifts and insights aside, his words would have been little different from Jacobs had he been tapped in Michigan. Duty is not a flexible thing.
The worst man in America happens to be our President. The ridiculous efforts of American evangelicals to provide Trump, as secular and theologically vacant a POTUS as has ever come down the pike, with pious bona fides has been pathetic and laughable, kabuki nonsense punctuating outrageous hypocrisy.
However, number two in line for the big seat, and arguably the second worst our nation can offer, needs no elevation from Graham and Falwell Jr. or any of the rest of born again America’s false prophets; Pence is a true believer. Even Lon Solomon could not be more devoted, or less given to accepting other roads to eternal salvation. Unfortunately for the fallen in Pittsburgh, only one route heads to a glorious hereafter and they are too late. Both Lon Solomon and Mike Pence could not be more certain of that fate. But remember one thing before you get too upset with them…. they’re just the messengers. BC