Rush Limbaugh's Phony Profession and Testimony

According to Christian media we are supposed to be excited that at long last after thirty years on the public stage (and as his voice is soon to be silenced due to terminal illness), Rush Limbaugh is at last a Christian. He has a 'personal relationship' with Christ.

I don't buy it for a second. As a lost person I used to sneak off during my lunch break and listen to Limbaugh. This was around 1991 and he had me pretty worked up by the time of the 1992 election. And like many others at the time I was convinced a Clinton victory would result in America becoming socialist, the economy would collapse, and resurgent communism would overshadow the world.

Well, Limbaugh and his ilk were wrong and they've been wrong many times since. And they're not just wrong. They're not even close. We saw another round of this with Obama and we're getting ready for another round with Biden.

When I actually became a Christian in 1995 and started to re-examine and question my assumptions and understanding I learned more about American political history and the Right in particular. It was very enlightening. I came to understand that this same red-baiting Right-wing nonsense had been around for decades. The Goldwaterism I had been raised with was more of the same. He had perpetuated the same myths in the 1960's and 1970's. And before that you had the John Birch Society and Joseph McCarthy in the 1950's. These people have always been wrong and yet their followers don't seem to pick up on this – pick up on the fact these people are wrong because they don't know what they're talking about. The world is far more complex than their reductionist and even juvenile frameworks. They've misunderstood the past, present and thus certainly have no clue when it comes to what to expect in the future.

When Obama was elected I remember Christian friends that were suggesting we should all close down our small businesses because Obama was going to take them over (nationalize) them. Yeah, that's really what happened.

The false teacher and usurer Dave Ramsey sat on his radio show telling aspiring doctors to look into another field because under Obama's socialised medicine scheme (which the ACA isn't) there was no future in medicine. They'd be reduced to being government employees making sub-par wages.

These people are wrong – consistently. That's the only consistency they seem able to demonstrate.

When I became a Christian I realised within weeks that many of the Right-wing attitudes that had been woven into my very being were not Christian in the least and I began to purge them. Being out of the United States certainly helped. Curious about the alternatives, I examined them and began to examine everything and re-question all the history, politics, and theology I had been taught.

The answers are both unsatisfying and liberating. There is no camp or faction to ally with. No one has it all right. No one has the solution. It leaves one feeling rather adrift but it's also liberating in that I have the Kingdom of Christ and the Holy Spirit (through the Scriptures) tells me how to live, how to think about history, the world, money and the like. The New Testament paradigm is antithetical to the world, incompatible with the notion of political alliance or agenda. It turned me into a pilgrim but one at peace, one determined to be faithful and persevere.

I repented of the attitudes that once governed me and I repented and still repent of my sins. I have sought by God's grace to die to myself and the lessons have been hard and brutally humbling. Some of the lessons have taken me over twenty years to learn and I'm still learning.

What should we think of those who 'convert' but then are merely affirmed in their attitudes, lifestyle and thought that they already exhibited as unregenerate people? What that tells me is that their conversions are bogus, and that there's no real repentance.

Rush Limbaugh hasn't repented. If he really had been changed by the Holy Spirit he would break with his past and use his platform to tell the truth. He wouldn't become a Leftist. Of course not, but he would denounce the Right and the larger system as well as his own past celebration of sin. He has championed warfare (which is theft and murder), economic exploitation of the weak, of people in other countries. He has celebrated avarice and decadence. He's Right-wing but he's never really been very conservative. His life shows it. Where's the repentance? It just isn't there and he demonstrates this with taking his lies to the next level in the age of Trump.

I only catch snippets of him in the car as I'm driving between things. I can only stand to listen to him for about fifteen minutes at a time. It's more morbid curiosity for me and even a degree of reflective fascination. I can't believe (and am ashamed to admit) that I once found him funny, intelligent, insightful and I valued his opinion. I bought his books and the whole mindset that went with it. It played no small role in why I (foolishly and wickedly) swore an oath to the US system, put on its uniform and played my part in its killing machine.

But I repented of these things. As a Christian I was repulsed by his juvenile nastiness and his fanatical anti-Clintonism. Truth had nothing to do with what Limbaugh was doing on his radio show. He hasn't repented of any of this. To do so would not mean a vindication of Bill Clinton but rather an acknowledgement that the truth was not served by his programme.

And let's not forget the man has grown fabulously wealthy in the process. A glutton, a boaster, a liar – I see no repentance and when Rush Limbaugh dies I have no reason to expect he is in the presence of Christ.

The award-spectacle at the State of the Union was a travesty but it's a travesty within a system that is itself travesty – so in that respect it is fitting. Limbaugh knows what the American political order really is – what a sham it all is. Does he expose this? No, he takes its rewards. I hope he enjoys them because this life is short.

For my part when I hear his immediately recognizable voice on the radio I think of my father and my upbringing. And then I shut it off.  Sometimes when we follow Christ that's what we're called to do.