If you support President Donald J. Trump because you believe he has been ordained by God for his office, then I assume you are voting for candidates who hitch their wagons to his star. Permit me a word or two with you.
You are wrong.
Donald Trump was not ordained by God to be President of the United States. He was elected by enough citizens to win the electoral college. It’s as frustratingly simple as that.
The idea that political leaders are somehow specially sent and put in place by God was once known as “the divine right of kings.” There was a war fought in North America back in the latter part of the 18th century that many think pretty well buried that notion. The leaders of that war of revolution were convinced that political leaders served at the will of the people, not because God had designated them to lead. A person who is “godly” in some ways might well be elected and serve, and that’s okay. But he or she is not in that position because God put her or him there.
The idea is popular in some circles that Mr. Trump is a new chosen one of God destined to save the United States from something, I’m not sure from whom or from what (impoverished trekkers in Mexico perhaps). The particular God they have in mind most often sounds as if they are thinking of the Christian God. They defend Mr. Trump in terms that sound vaguely Christian. I recently saw a picture of him holding up a “Holy Bible” – that is, a Christian Bible.
How do they make this connection? Because of Mr. Trump’s exemplary personal life, a life so morally and ethically beyond the reaches of “sin” that he is a Christ-like model for the rest of us? I cannot see this as remotely close to being true of Mr. Trump and his life.
Fortunately, moral perfection is not a requirement of serving in public office. But I do think moral honesty is quite necessary. Moral honesty of the Christian sort is absent from a person who claims, as Mr. Trump has, that he is not sure he’s ever asked God for forgiveness because he’d rather just move on and make things right. That way of dealing with moral failure perhaps has merits, but it’s not particularly Christian. Besides, Mr. Trump has given us little reason to think he’s done much to “make (moral) things right” in the two years he’s been in office.
I am pretty sure that many Christians feel Mr. Trump is called by God to the office of President for two big reasons. First, that he seems to be with them on the so-called “social” issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc., which they see as the main issues that define being Christian. And second, that he promises to restore the USA’s pre-eminent place among the nations, which is to them where the USA belongs because of the “exceptionalism” that has been granted us by God.
I respect other Christians’ right to understand the “social” issues in ways far different than I understand them. But as Americans together, I resist their attempts to force their particular understanding of such issues upon us all based upon their reading of our Bible. And I am deeply opposed to the idea that our nation is in any ultimate and decisive way “exceptional,” especially when that notion is used to justify militarism, racism, xenophobia, and the like.
Back to Mr. Trump himself: Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” What “fruits” has the Trump presidency produced? The Christian scripture’s fruits of love, peace, justice, patience, truth, and the like? I do not see them on his tree. Rather, I see hatred, distrust, threats…the list goes on. Currently, in his violent rhetoric against immigrants and asylum seekers, he is gleefully and disdainfully rejecting the many biblical commands to welcome the stranger. Mr. Trump did not invent the rotten fruits he is producing. But in his words (and words DO matter) and in his actions he surely has made it okay to practice them publicly.
You may be among those who like what Mr. Trump has done policy-wise, and therefore are willing to overlook the way he’s accomplished those things you like. So, the end justifies the means, is that what you are telling me? “We had to destroy the village to save it,” as they sometimes said in Vietnam? In time, wrong ways employed in the pursuit of supposedly good ends eat at the heart of a person or a nation, and can destroy both from within. When you have to tell lies to get what you want, when will the lying end?
If Donald Trump’s kind of moral and ethical output is what you like and think is good for us as a people and for the world, go ahead, support him, and vote for his defenders. You and I are still Americans together. But don’t you ever call it Christian, or pretend the results it is producing reflect the life and ministry of Jesus. You cannot get there from here. And in your heart, you know it.
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