A good man. A man with a big God.

A giant of the House, fierce Trump critic and all-around good man died today. Elijah Cummings will be missed by his family, his constituents, his friends, Democrats, decent Republicans and much of the population as a whole.

And how did Trump react to Cummings' death? There was a tweet on his timeline that read as follows:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump My warmest condolences to the family and many friends of Congressman Elijah Cummings. I got to see first hand the strength, passion and wisdom of this highly respected political leader. His work and voice on so many fronts will be very hard, if not impossible, to replace!

I will leave it to the discerning reader to judge whether Trump wrote this tweet. Allow me to point out the fulsome praise, as well as the lack of misspellings, capitals and simplistic language. Trump is not one for grace. I suspect that he grudgingly allowed this to go out under his name.

Others were blatantly worse — crediting their sadistic God with Cummings' demise. Jesses Lee Peterson, the right-wing commentator and pastor, used his radio program to declare, “that’s what happens when you mess with The Great White Hope”. (Peterson is black, and that is his nickname for Trump)

Peterson was so impressed by God’s homicidal abilities he added to the list

“If you notice, John McCain, he dead. Charles Krauthammer, he dead. And Elijah Cumming, now he dead. They all didn’t like The Great White Hope, they went against him, they talked about him, now they all dead. That’s amazin’.”

His is a very unChristian Christianity.

There were others. Dave Daubenmire declared that Cummings was an “enemy of the cross” — whatever that means.

Chris McDonald, vocal right-winger and conspiracy theorist, streamed a special edition of his “The MC Files” devoted to abusing the recently deceased. He and his guest, Pastor Stacey Shiflett, spent the entire program attacking Cummings as corrupt, unbiblical, and ungodly - and asserting that God had taken his life because of his opposition to Donald Trump.

Here’s a sample:

“You’ve got a leader that has been in office for over 30 years, that opened the door on unfettered abortion in this country. His civil rights icon status was a joke because he did nothing to bring rights to his people; all he did was divide, all he did was play the race card.” He added that Cummings was a corrupt and lawless leader who waged “a cooked, deceptive, demonic attempt” to take down Trump. Finishing with: “Everything that he’s done has been nothing but trying to take this president out. I believe that God had had enough, and God moved.”

Why is their God such a small, vindictive arse? Why does he hate so many people? And why does he believe precisely what they do? As John Pavlovitz said in his blog post ‘The Terribly Tiny God of MAGA Christians’: “They passionately worship a deity made in their own image: white, American, Republican, male — and perpetually terrified of Muslim, immigrants, gay children, Special Counsel reports, mandalas, Harry Potter, Starbucks holiday cups, yoga, wind turbines, science — everything.”

You could add to that: smart women, the gender fluid, foreigners, the UN, universities, Antifa, the EPA, atheists, and vegans.

At one time, man’s horizons were close. Most people didn’t know that the moon and sun were objects. They had no idea of other planets, galaxies, and the universe. At the other end of the scale, they did not know about microbes, cells, or atoms. In fairness, the ancient Greeks were making huge strides, but the people of the Bible were in an intellectual gloom.

But there is no excuse for this grinding ignorance anymore. I don’t know why knowing something is so scary, and thinking is so hard for so many. It takes a special kind of dumb to cling to ignorance. But the ranks of the Christian right are replete with the gullible being fleeced by the greedy.

And let us note, in closing, that Elijah Cummings was an active member of the New Psalmist Baptist Church. And if there is a God, Cummings is undoubtedly enjoying a warm welcome upstairs. The kind of welcome that the Bible says Jesus will deny to Peterson, Daubenmire, and Shiflett.

(This diary has been updated to correct an earlier version that said Trump had not tweeted any condolences.)