Rick Perry must take a Bible study refresher course: Exodus 20:3-5

Echo opinion letter published in The Dallas Morning News

"When confronted with his myriad sins from serial adultery to his  total disdain of the truth, Trump demonizes his accusers and has never repented of anything," Cecil Larry Pool.

Obviously Rick Perry must take a Bible Study refresher course:

Exodus 20:3-5 King James Version (KJV)
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God

Rick Perry is putting Trump up as a graven image. His statement is blasphemy.

Re: “God chose president, Perry says,” Tuesday news story.

As a professor of history and a Baptist pastor, I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the comments of Rick Perry. As a historian, I know that our nation was founded on the repudiation of the divine right of monarchs, declaring that governments are “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

I understand the difference between the active and permissive will of God. The view that God is simply a grand puppeteer and that men have no choice make him the architect not only of good but the horrible as well. It is this flawed theology that turns so many against the Gospel message.

To equate Donald Trump with the biblical King David is sad. When confronted with his sins, David repented as he expressed in Psalm 51. When confronted with his myriad sins from serial adultery to his total disdain of the truth, Trump demonizes his accusers and has never repented of anything.

Perry and the other evangelicals who totally support Trump defy our historical heritage and distort the Bible. 

As a religious minister, I choose to stand with Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence and the biblical prophet Nathan.

Cecil Larry Pool, Midlothian Texas