What’s especially infuriating about white evangelicals rolling over and showing their bellies to the Republican party’s clown car full of fascist-wannabes isn’t just the street magic soul-contortions they must fool themselves into believing they’re not performing, but their remarkable lack of empathy and compassion.

How can people who claim to follow Jesus hear the cries of the wounded, who’re forced to live in fear and squalor, adjusting themselves to our view of a safe and just world . . . how can we hear those cries and think only about the most effective way to drown them out—just because we find those cries inconveniently challenge the world we’ve built for ourselves, cries that plead with us to adjust ourselves to a different world than the one we’re comfortable with—to see things through someone else’s eyes?

Consequently, to imagine myself as Abraham—or Sarah or Lot, for that matter—is to forfeit an opportunity to be exposed to a different, harder truth that the text has to show someone who lives the kind of privileged life I do.

But while I haven’t ever had to pull up stakes and head into the unknown, I have lived in a place for which other people have left their own countries and the houses of their parents on nothing more than faith in a promise. I’ve lived my whole life in a land that has been the often inhospitable destination for people just like Abraham and his family.

And the last step, the pièce de résistance? Get as many white evangelicals as possible to chime in: “This is what God wants. God put this president in office. And God is blessing his efforts. If you want a r̶a̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶u̶r̶e̶ God-fearing country, you’ve got to be willing to s̶a̶c̶r̶i̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r̶e̶n̶ make some sacrifices.”