Over the past year, since Donald Trump was dethroned as president but has since expressed interest in returning to the White House, one of the questions on the lips of a lot of people, whether supporters or detractors, is “What are his chances of doing so, and what would happen if he succeeds or fails?” Should a run fail, some have suggested that a failed run would result in an incident that would make the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection look like — pardon the pun — a tea party.
But I think we need to consider another possibility: Suppose
Trump doesn’t live that long. That isn’t beyond such a realm, since he isn’t a
young man, in great physical shape and even, as we saw two years ago, wasn’t even
immune to COVID-19, with reports that he was sicker than he let on. (For a
while he defiantly refused to wear a mask, insisting that doing so made him
look weak.)
And even if these weren’t the case, he’s a mortal like
everyone else and his time on this earth is limited. What bothers me about
Christians’ worship of Trump is that they almost assume that he is indeed
immortal and thus not subject to the normal parameters of life. As I’ve written
before, he’s seen quite ominously as a messianic figure who will remove power
from the people they hate — that is, “liberals” — and restore things to the way
they, shall we say, “used to be.” (Recall that was the misunderstanding of the
original prophecy of the Messiah.)
That was the case with the two travelers on the road to
Emmaus, recorded in Luke 24, who didn’t recognize Jesus, who by this time was
resurrected, as He walked among them, but He opened the Scriptures to them — and
then vanished. The travelers understood that they had completely missed the
point — that he had come to redeem mankind, not just Israel.
We would be foolish to expect something similar from Trump
despite the prayers and singing of Christian songs before the riot of last Jan.
6. After all, we can be sure of this: When he dies, he will not be coming back.
