The defeat of an idol — and its ramifications

Many Christian supporters of now-former President Donald Trump were doing so because they believed that he was going to spark a religious revival. That was always false on its face because God doesn’t work the way they want, primarily by reestablishing laws, most notably restrictions on legal abortion.

What has surprised — and dismayed — me is the amount of bitterness many are spewing these days in the aftermath of the election, what with complaints about the election being “stolen,” even though it wasn’t; their willingness to insult political opponents such as Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris; and even their participation in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

And that says something pretty telling: Their faith was always in the political process, never truly in God. And that’s why they are in fact sabotaging the revival they say they want.

For “Christianity” has for many become little more than a set of political positions independent of following Jesus — imitating His character, rejecting worldly ways and seeking reconciliation. Nor is there any emphasis on cultivating the “fruit of the [Holy] Spirit,” mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23 — “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

As a result, following Ezekiel 36:20, “But when [Israelites] came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned [My] holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of [His] land.’ ”

That is what Trump represented — profanation of God’s holy name. It would be one thing if they voted for him but held him accountable for his racism and divisiveness and threatened to withhold their votes if he didn’t shape up, but they didn’t.

In other words, Trump became an idol in his own right, and we know how God feels about idolatry. The fact that so many Christians are enraged with by his defeat shows that they haven’t gotten the message — and will suffer more defeats in the near future.

Why Christians shouldn’t celebrate Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh often joked that his talent was “on loan from God.” That’s about the only true thing, at least in a theological sense, that he ever said.

Today the longtime radio host passed away from lung cancer, and it’s not hard to see that he misused that talent, using distortions and ridicule from 1987 to last year to lampoon those of a more progressive ideological stripe and in the process causing a major divide in this country that exists to this day. I for one refused to listen to him because, according to Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers” — and there’s no getting around the fact that Limbaugh, considered the voice of the “angry white male,” was a mocker.

And yet millions upon millions of Christians hung on his every word for the latest broadside against his targets, playing into their bitterness and resentment. Eventually other right-wing talkmeisters hit the airwaves, and to this day they’re still spouting their bile, most making a mint in the process. And we often wonder why much of the church is in such bad shape — three hours of spiritual poison poured daily into one’s brain doesn’t lend itself to meditating on the things of God.

I know what you might be saying: “Aren’t ‘liberals’ just as bad?” No, and that’s not even relevant. You don’t even consistently have left-wing talk-radio, for openers; most of the time such shows don’t last because they don’t get the ratings (you have some late-night TV hosts, but they don’t have the reach). Besides, people of religious faith don’t watch them anyway, which is the point.

Since Donald Trump was defeated in November and is no longer president, some have said that this nation needs to take “time to heal.” But part of the healing process involves identifying and excising lingering attitudes, and it’s clear that Limbaugh fostered those — that is to say, they came from somewhere and didn’t just start in 2016.

The end of a political career

The current impeachment trial of now-former President Donald J. Trump, based on his alleged incitement of the rioters that took place on Jan. 6, is intended by Democrats as the end of Trump’s political career. The intent, of course, is to keep him from seeking federal office ever again.

Whether that happens or not and if he’s acquitted of that charge, which at this point appears likely, his political career is over anyway. Because — make no mistake about this — God Himself took him down. And that happened not because of the Capitol riot that his supporters took part in.

What really doomed Trump was that stunt during which he held up that Bible in front of an Episcopal church, which took place June 1 of last year. God ran out of patience with him because, like a lot of the so-called religious right, he intended to use it to promote his own authority rather than submit himself to the only real Authority that mattered.

And the dominoes began falling as a result.

While forces on the political left, including but not limited to voter-registration drives, were already marshaled against the Trump campaign, it turned out that the business community was growing tired of the political instability that he had always fostered, even though it agreed with most of his actual policies. After Jan. 6 its lobbying groups announced that it would no longer donate to Republican candidates that supported the insurrection.

But before that, some evangelical groups and individuals decided to throw their support behind then-candidate Joe Biden, bucking the trend of Trump-supporting Christians. Then you have his failure to lead on COVID-19, costing hundreds of thousands of lives. And did you notice at the Republican National Convention just how few Republicans were willing to put in a good word for him, a requirement to speak?

The result was the kind of broad-based organizing coalition that would have been required to beat Trump at the ballot box — and, of course, did.

By the time he tried to strongarm GOP-dominated legislatures and secretaries of states in swing states into changing election results amid baseless accusations of voter fraud, it was clear that he was finished.

It wasn’t simply the voters who had spoken at that point, you see. Ultimately, God had as well, in the process putting to shame those so-called prophets who tried to convince people that Trump was a shoo-in and then doubled down after Nov. 7. The riot failed to change the result because, really, Trump and his supporters were fighting against God, Who refuses to be mocked.

And while Trump still has his base, which is as strong as ever, he’s already finished as an electoral force because he’s alienated virtually everyone else — including the people at the hands of the mechanisms required to get people elected in the first place. And let’s not forget his other legal issues — charges of financial fraud in New York state and election tampering in Georgia, either of which could put him away for a while.

In that context, the impeachment might prove anticlimactic because even if Trump gets off he may end up going from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. He tried, and was still trying, to play God, and the True and Living God doesn’t appreciate anyone trying to knock Him off His rightful throne.

Finally being ‘owned’

Over the past four years the modern “conservative” movement has fallen to new depths as for what it really stands for. Or perhaps more accurately, what it stands against.

Because, as much as it tried to put a positive spin on what it believed, such as “less government,” it really wasn’t at all descriptive of not just its agenda but also its intent — which, as things turned out, is capsulized in just one phrase that became popular since Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016.

That phrase?  “Owning the libs.” That sounds like an effective rallying cry, and it has been over the years, but it also epitomizes what its focus has always been.

Modern conservatism has always been at bottom a reactionary movement, enviously pushing back against the progressivism that first reared its head in the 1960s. In other words, it’s based almost exclusively on bitterness and resentment toward what it sees as the “left,” though that side of the political fence is far more diverse that it believes (e.g., “liberals,” the hard left and the powers that be in the Democratic Party are not the same people) and tends to equate anyone not on its team as an existential threat. Not for nothing does it target those agitating for social change — it takes personally any challenge to its own desire for power and refuses to listen to anyone else. This is why, for example, it tried to besmirch the Black Lives Matter movement that dominated many news cycles over the summer, saying falsely that it was inherently violent and fostering riots.

And then we see government in general and the “deep state” — that is, bureaucrats who actually run things professionally — in particular and the mainstream media as two more groups that in such a mindset need to be denigrated. (The reality, however, is that you simply can’t run a functional society without those two institutions.)

Conservatism is especially poisonous when combined with religion, the dominant faith in the United States being Christianity. That’s because the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is reconciliation through Him, is necessarily excised for the sake of dominating others — in other words, the faith itself becomes liberal.

Yes, liberal, in that certain “liberties” are taken with the Word of God and reinterpreted to mean things that He never said or authorized.

Such as the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, as electoral votes were about to be counted that would confirm Joe Biden’s legitimate election as president. It broke my heart to learn that Christians were not only involved in it but even trying to justify it, with the singing of Christian songs and the offering of prayers that the vote would be stopped to allow now-former-President Donald Trump another term in office. And make no mistake — that attitude is how he got to be president in the first place.

It’s also why he lost last year, however, as when you focus on power for its own sake you lose the reason why you seek office in the first place — to serve, not to dominate, everyone else. We saw that with COVID-19, which Trump tried to ignore because the idea of responsibility was always foreign to him. (This is a place where the Bible’s commands were in fact tossed out.) Basically, he wanted to rule, not govern, which is why he ended up being “owned” by those same “liberals” that he denounced.

Oh, sure, you did have a school of intellectualism in conservatism, which I did respect despite my disagreements with it, in such publications as National Review and the late Weekly Standard, the latter of which went under because of its opposition to Trump. But as Pat Buchanan said in 2008 in The New Yorker, “You can write columns and all that, but they don’t engage the heart.”

And in this case, the “heart” represents denying others the same status as what folks want for themselves. In essence, the conservative movement in practice wanted to turn those that didn’t agree with it into second- or third-class citizens not even worthy of an ear. As such, I can’t see why we can have any sense of unity and reconciliation in a post-Trump country — when the opposition is labeled as “socialist,” as it has been, there’s nothing more to say.

To wit, “owning the libs” has been a good rallying slogan but one that actually helped to make this country virtually ungovernable. To our eternal shame.

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.”