05/10/2026
Love: A Cold Golden Idol or a Warm Mother’s Heart
By A Country Pastor
I know you have seen the grotesque, cold golden statue already. I waited until today to write about it. I waited until this Sunday morning while many of the same evangelical pastors who gathered around it now stand in pulpits preaching the religion of Trump nationalism wrapped in the language of Christianity.
There is something spiritually revealing about those images. A cold golden statue of power surrounded by religious leaders smiling as though they are standing in the presence of something holy. Hard metal. Cold gold. Lifeless power polished into the image of a man. The image tells its own story whether they intend it to or not. There is no warmth in it. No tenderness. No mercy. No compassion. Gold cannot hold a frightened child through the night. Gold cannot comfort a grieving mother. Gold cannot sit beside a hospital bed or whisper hope into a broken heart. Gold shines, but it does not love.
That contrast feels especially heavy on a Sunday centered around mothers and care. Children often idolize their mothers in their earliest years because mothers are usually the first face of comfort, warmth, protection, and love they ever know. To a small child, a mother can seem larger than life itself. But healthy growth changes that understanding into something deeper. What begins as childhood idolization matures into trust, gratitude, respect, sacrifice, presence, and love rooted in relationship instead of domination.
Over time, we begin to understand that our mothers were never meant to sit upon pedestals. They were meant to help teach us how to love, how to nurture, how to forgive, protect, and care for others with tenderness and compassion. In many ways, that is also how our relationship with God was always meant to deepen through the greatest love story ever told found in Scripture.
Humanity often begins with a fearful understanding of God rooted in rules, punishment, and power. But the deeper journey through Scripture continually calls humanity toward mercy, compassion, justice, relationship, and love until that love is fully revealed through Jesus. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The story of Scripture keeps moving humanity away from the worship of power and toward the understanding that the heart of God is revealed through service, sacrifice, forgiveness, and care for others.
There is also something strangely symbolic about gold itself. Scientists believe at least some of the gold found on earth may trace its origins to ancient cosmic collisions long before human civilization existed. Gold arrived rare, bright, desirable, and shining, and humanity has chased it ever since. Kingdoms have murdered for it. Empires have been built around it. Entire economies and religions have bent themselves toward its shine. Yet in the end, it remains cold metal pulled from the ground. It cannot heal humanity no matter how brightly it glitters.
John Mark Burns, described as an evangelical minister and spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, reportedly led the unveiling ceremony at Trump National Doral Miami surrounded by religious figures celebrating the statue. Burns described it as “a celebration of life and a powerful symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, courage, and the will to keep fighting for America.”
And there it is plainly. The language centers around patriotism, strength, fighting, political identity, and cultural power wrapped in religious imagery. It is the language of winning, protecting, and conquering. But it is not the Sermon on the Mount. It is far removed from the Jesus who spoke about mercy, peacemaking, humility, enemy love, and care for the vulnerable (Matthew 5:43-48). The spirit surrounding these gatherings reflects the kinds of kingdoms humanity repeatedly builds for itself, kingdoms driven by fear, outrage, appearances, and the hunger to dominate, while the kingdom of God keeps calling people back toward compassion, justice, forgiveness, and love.
Whether these leaders fully recognize it or not, the public witness surrounding these moments reveals how easily faith becomes intertwined with nationalism and earthly power until many people can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
At the same time, I know there are many good people sitting in those churches this morning. I know many of them personally. They are there because their parents were there and their grandparents were there before them. They were baptized there. Married there. Buried loved ones from there. Their memories are woven into those pews and sanctuaries. Many are kind people trying to hold onto faith, family, tradition, and community in a world that feels unstable and frightening.
Many feel deep down that something is wrong, yet they also feel trapped between loyalty to Jesus and loyalty to the culture surrounding them. But every generation eventually reaches moments where tradition alone is no longer enough, and people must decide whether their churches are still pointing toward Jesus or whether they have become vehicles for political power wrapped in religious language. Scripture repeatedly warns about religious leaders who scatter the sheep while claiming divine authority for themselves. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (Jeremiah 23:1). Jesus himself warned about religious leaders who neglected “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).
That is why these gatherings around Trump feel spiritually dangerous. Many of these evangelical leaders no longer speak primarily about humility, compassion, mercy, sacrifice, or care for the vulnerable. Their message increasingly centers around grievance, nationalism, fear, dominance, and protecting cultural power. The cross becomes draped in flags and political branding until people can barely distinguish the Gospel of Jesus from the religion of nationalism itself.
The temptation has always been the same. Trade the difficult teachings of Jesus for access to earthly power. Trade compassion for control. Trade mercy for influence. Trade the suffering servant for the strongman. Scripture warned about it in the kingdoms of Israel, and Jesus confronted it again under Rome.
But the story of God keeps interrupting the story of empire. God enters the world not through a palace wrapped in gold, not through a ruler demanding loyalty, but through the body of a woman. The lineage leading to Jesus moves through mothers carrying life through poverty, uncertainty, exile, violence, grief, and oppression. Sarah. Ruth. Hannah. Mary. The Gospel itself arrives wrapped in vulnerability and love. The kingdoms of man build monuments to themselves while the kingdom of God kneels beside the hurting.
That is why Scripture repeatedly describes God through the language of motherhood, nurture, and care. When humanity struggled to understand the heart of God, Scripture repeatedly reached for the language of mothers, birth, nurture, protection, tenderness, and shelter because those were among the deepest forms of love human beings understood. “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13). Jesus looked over Jerusalem and cried that he longed to gather the people together “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Matthew 23:37). Even the Spirit of God hovers over creation itself with protective tenderness before life begins (Genesis 1:2). Again and again, the Bible points humanity away from domination and back toward compassion, mercy, tenderness, and love.
Meanwhile mothers continue doing the sacred work that actually keeps the world alive. They hold families together with patience, sacrifice, tears, forgiveness, endurance, meals, hugs, prayers, encouragement, and quiet acts of love that rarely make headlines. A tired mother comforting a frightened child carries more of the Spirit of God than a thousand pastors gathered around political idols. A grandmother praying quietly for her family reflects more holiness than celebrity preachers chasing influence and proximity to power. A woman exhausted from carrying the burdens of others while still choosing kindness reveals more about the kingdom of heaven than all the polished stages and golden monuments this world can build.
That is the contrast I cannot stop thinking about this morning. The coldness of gold compared to the warmth of love. The hardness of empire compared to the tenderness of God. The way of man compared to the way of Jesus. One path leads people toward fear, spectacle, grievance, domination, and idols built in humanity’s own image. The other leads people toward mercy, humility, healing, forgiveness, compassion, and love. One path keeps demanding worship. The other keeps teaching people how to love their neighbors, care for the vulnerable, welcome the stranger, and stop being afraid (John 14:27).
The world does not need more golden idols. It does not need more pastors gathering around power while calling it faith. The world needs people willing to love when cruelty becomes fashionable. The world needs people willing to nurture life while others worship domination. The world needs hearts warm enough to still care for one another in a culture becoming colder by the day.
Metal does not breathe. Mothers do.
That has always been the deeper story of Scripture. The greatest love story ever told. And no amount of gold from the stars will ever shine brighter than a human life lived in love.
