Life without Trump

Has anyone noticed just how quiet things have been in Washington, D.C. since now-former President Donald Trump has left office? It’s simultaneously boring and comforting not to have to notice the new regime in not only the White House but also in Congress.

And it’s not simply Trump and his political sycophants and enablers in the Republican Party that have gone virtually silent. We also have heard barely a peep out of evangelical leaders who not only supported him through these last four years but predicted — falsely, as things turned out — that he’d be in the White House for eight. I don’t know what they’re doing, but a part of me hopes that they’re now afraid to show their faces.

What’s even more gratifying to me personally is the collapse of the QAnon cult that held that Trump was going to bust members of the media and Democratic politicians that were engaging in a child-sex-trafficking ring, an accusation with no basis in fact. Many were hoping that the storming of the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 would spark those mass arrests; instead, some of his erstwhile followers have now dismissed him out of hand, calling him “weak.” (Which most of us already knew.)

And on top of that, social media outlets, citing violations of terms of service, not only banned Trump in light of the riot but some months previously also began shutting down QAnon-related accounts, prophetically citing the potential for real-world violence.

Here’s hope that the calm we may feel now produces some healing from the abuse that this nation has suffered over the past four years. But more than that: Similar to the Truth & Reconciliation efforts in post-apartheid South Africa, we need a full accounting of what actually happened and why so that it’s never repeated.

Some are saying that the second impeachment trial of Trump, tentatively scheduled for next month and which I believe to be just, isn’t necessary because it would “divide the country.” Nonsense, since the country already has been divided for four decades; he simply exploited that. We also know that he’s completely unrepentant so, although I don’t see him as returning to the White House, it’s up to us to make sure that he’s never in power again.

Above all, we Christians who did support him — of course, I’m not in that number — ought to take a look at ourselves to consider how we went wrong. Perhaps we focused too much on political and cultural power to allow the light of Christ to shine through. Perhaps we saw Trump as a messiah to rid the world of the “ungodly,” never mind his lack of commitment to any, let alone Christian, principles. There’s no question that our support of Trump has hurt the witness of the Gospel.

If we turn back to God with our whole hearts in humility, know what will result? The revival that people say that they want.

The result of ‘cheap grace’

Two weekends ago I was explaining to someone that the basic problem with the presidency of Donald Trump, thankfully coming to an end tomorrow, wasn’t merely political or ideological — it was theological in nature.

I didn’t appreciate just how true that was until I learned that the riot at the U.S. Capitol building two weeks ago featured “Christian patriots” in full force, believers invoking God and Christian music being played and sung. (And, I might add, alleged Christians using foul language in the process.)

At that, I was horrified.

Numerous Jews who survived the Holocaust have noted that Trump’s racist rhetoric was reminiscent of Hitler, not to mention the large number of supporters that he had. The reason I bring up Nazi Germany is that I’m reminded of the real problem with the church there was with what martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”

That failure of American evangelicalism, most notably in its “charismatic” wing, which dominates Christian media, is what really drives people away from a true knowledge of the Savior and the reconciliation that He represents. The thinking is, really, in practice that once personal sins are forgiven you can pretty much live the way you want. Sin, of course, runs much deeper than personal sins or those connected to sex, stealing or lying.

Back in January 1984, at the lowest point of my life, I attended a church retreat. During that retreat we held a communion service, and after I took the wine I burst into tears, saying, I killed Jesus, I killed Jesus. You see, as bad as things were, in that moment I was owning my own sin for the first time, not blaming anyone else for my predicament. More to the point, in that moment I recognized just what my internal condition cost God.

If you’re not mourning your sin in that or a similar fashion or at least have never done so, you need to check your heart. Because what that should and will produce is humility, a sense of “there but for the grace of God go I — how did I escape God’s judgment?”

Get that? “Grace” — which Bonhoeffer called “costly grace,” not making light of the things that people did, said or even thought that proved evil in the long run. Of course, Bonhoeffer was specifically referring to the church in Nazi Germany, most of which for the sake of preserving itself allied itself with Hitler. (The church failed in that mission, which is why it has so little authority today.)

The “media” wing of the American evangelical church is in similar danger today — and, indeed, has been for decades because it preaches “salvation” but not a separation, and thus transformation, from the world’s way of thinking. There is simply no way that it could whole-heartedly support such a corrupt, cruel, morally compromised, bullying person if it truly understood the grace of God.

And that is why I would never believe that Trump is a true Christian. He said in an interview some years ago that he couldn’t remember anything he had to repent for. He grew up in a church pastored by Norman Vincent Peale — remember the heretical “The Power of Positive Thinking”? — and applied that concept to his entire life, including some big-time denial specifically about COVID-19. Reports have come out that he actually relished the riot that took place two weeks ago rather than fall to his face and say, “What have I done?”

What I hope happens in light of the wreckage that supporting Trump has caused — leading much of the church to sabotage its own witness — that it would repent of the “cheap grace” that Bonhoeffer talked about. That’s the only way it will not only survive but thrive in what many folks see, falsely in my view, as an inherent hostility to religious faith during a Biden administration.

‘You just damned your cause’

In light of the riot Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Building by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump, I was reminded of a rant that Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald wrote in response to the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001. Reading it again today, I noticed just how similar Pitts’ reactions were to how we should perhaps react to Wednesday’s actions.

They were those of, not to put too fine a point on it, terrorists inflamed by the president himself, who for the last two months complained, with no evidence, that the election, which he lost, was “stolen.”

And this isn’t new by any stretch. Trump has always been a violent man, threatening physical violence numerous times during his 2016 campaign. Nor should this come as any surprise, since probably the majority of his supporters are absolutely intolerant of anyone who disagrees — and have been for decades. It thus didn’t surprise me that they tried to hang President-elect Joe Biden with the pejorative “socialist.” That is, at best, an exaggeration — they simply want to exert power and control.

Not wanting to take responsibility for their role in Wednesday’s riot, following their infamous and fearful leader, they’ve taken to blaming it on left-wing “antifa” forces that supposedly infiltrated their ranks — again, without proof.

It will thus be interesting to see just how pro-Trump Christian leadership reacts to this. Many were ready to condemn Black Lives Matter for its alleged Marxist leanings, which they were likely convinced led to the riots — which, to be fair, took place in only a handful of cities and were fed by pro-Trump groups itching to fight.

But as I heard New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman say some years back, “Terrorists always overplay their hand.” That is to say, they’re so focused on the righteousness of their goals that to their mindset the means to achieve them was irrelevant. Numerous folks as disparate as Martin Luther King Jr. and the late Chicago Sun-Times columnist Sydney Harris have written that not only do the ends not justify the means but that the means can corrupt the ends, and I think they’ve done so in this case.

As Pitts wrote then, “Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.” We’re seeing that today, as GOP leadership that had previously supported Trump is now deserting him, numerous Cabinet secretaries are turning in their resignations and Democratic members of the House have asked Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to have Trump removed or, barring that, have drawn up more articles of impeachment.

I do believe that the healing has already begun, though it will take at least a generation to be fully reconciled because Trump supporters will continue to nurse their grievance and thus allow their bitterness full flower. But their cause has now been shown to the world as unjust — which is why, in describing 9/11, Pitts referred to it as “damned.”