How should a Christian who believes in America's founding principles best love America, when America's leader is abandoning those principles like a first or second wife?
Most of the traditionally loudest Christian organizations are staying silent on this, so I've put together a few thoughts:
- Embrace ignorance. No, don’t accept it - don’t take it in. But give your ignorant friends/relatives a hug. Let them know you love them. Look at them as you would someone about to go to the doctor to get their test results. They’re not evil - their mind is full of toxic, poisonous untruths and they don't even know yet. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” But before they can know it, or hear anything we have to say, they need to know that we love and accept them. That’s what tears down walls, ends defensiveness, and provides space for healing. That will give them room to consider what you have to say. How?
- Be kind. Unfailingly kind. I need to work on this one, because the implications of our politics truly hurt people, and can even kill. It’s so easy for tempers to flare up and to attack the person instead of their wrong fact or bad policy. When the stakes are so high, it’s easy to forget Paul’s advice in Ephesians 4:2, that we be “completely humble and gentle” or Philippians 4:5, where we’re told to “let our gentleness be evident to all”. Remember how Jesus viewed the crowds of his day, in Matthew 9:36. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” These people have been attacked by vicious wolves, which leads me to my next point:
- Realize that many Americans are casualties in a decades-long propoganda war. There’s a saying that fish are the last ones to discover water. Similarly, it can be the hardest for Christians to see that what they’ve been *told* their whole life is good and wholesome (Low taxes! Science is a hoax! End handouts! Buy guns! Bomb our enemies!) goes directly against, in many cases, the teaching of the One they follow. The work to co-opt the evangelical church for the Republican party began in the late 70’s, and that work was originally centered around the issue of abortion. We accepted the idea that God was opposed to abortion on demand, and over time, (abortion = evil democrats : republicans = party of Christianity) became a subconscious thought-terminating cliche. It’s taken at least 4 decades to get to this point, and so it will take time, patience, and kind repetition to get out of it.
- Explain patiently. Don’t judge. Explain again. It’s so hard to be patient when those we’re talking with talk about our Muslim former president, how ISIS will destroy America if we don’t stop them, or how democrats just want more abortions. All of those are easily verifiable as false, but they’re also (to varying degrees) deeply ingrained in the minds of our loved ones. It’s like someone who has a tumor that makes them angry, but they have tumors that make them wrong. Truth is the chemotherapy, but if the dose is too high - whether that’s in the form of too much information, or too judgmental of a tone (How could you get angry at me?! You shouldn’t have gotten cancer!), no one will want to take it, and they’ll go back to the comfortable lies that tell them everything currently happening is fine and just, and that Trump is saving America and making it great again.
- One step at a time! Change doesn’t happen overnight. Realize that believing what you already think is safe and comfortable, while moving to a new worldview is scary and disorienting - and those feelings have *no* correlation to whether the worldview is based in reality or not - just whether it’s new.
- Oppose evil. As Christians, we are certainly called to oppose evil, wherever it may rear it’s head. But as we do that, we should keep in mind the words and model of the author and finisher of our faith. He told Peter to put his sword away, and specifically explained that his followers don’t *fight* for him, because his kingdom is not of this world (Matthew 26:52, John 18:36). We’re also told in the Bible to lead peaceful lives (1 Timothy 2:1-2), honor the king, and entrust ourselves to him who judges justly (2 Peter 2:17-23). At the same time, we live in a democracy now, and to borrow from V from Vendetta, instead of answering to our king, our government answers to us. Here’s what I believe constitutes a Christian role under a hedonistic, uninformed, and anti-Christian president.
- Speak truth, consistently. Repetitively. Every time Trump or his team tell a lie or falsehood, we should work to make sure people know 1) the truth, as all truth is God’s truth - truth cannot ever go against Christianity (assuming Christianity is true, which I do) and 2) either that the speaker is a liar, or the speaker is not concerned with ensuring their words are truthful. People need to know what they *can’t* rely on for information about reality - and Trump’s twitter account is exhibit #1. To some of us, that might feel disrespectul. But Nathan & John the Baptist are our examples. Nathan directly rebuked King David for committing adultery with Bathsheba, and having her husband Uriah killed. John the Baptist repeatedly told Herod that it was wrong to be married to his brother Philip’s wife. One of those lead to repentence, and one lead to beheading, but both were carrying out their duty faithfully to consistently speak truth to those in need. When possible, use scripture, because the Bible says in 1 Timothy 3:16 that “all scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” Rebuking and correcting is what we need, and the more those come from Scripture, the more likely it is to be heard by Trump’s constituents.
- Call liars and propogandists what they are. I said above that we need to embrace the ignorant. But at some point, and this surely applies to Trump’s team and the leadership of the Republican party, we have to assume they know basic facts. Maybe not every detail, surely not everything we’ve read, but Trump knows beyond question that there were not 3-5 million illegal votes, which *all* went to Hillary (particularly as the only one that’s been found so far was for him). When he repeats this, as he does, that is a lie - especially once he continues to repeat it after having been corrected the first time. That means, as surely as 2 + 2 = 4, that Trump is a liar. It is not wrong, disrespectful, or unChristian to say so. That said, fake news is a thing on both sides, and we need to be careful we’re only calling our enemies out on things that are verified to be false. “I saw a headline” or “there was a Facebook meme” doesn’t cut it, and we need to be careful to model concern for truth. We need to have the noble character of the Bereans, who are described as searching to determine if what they heard was true (Acts 17:11). But when we can determine the President or his team know one thing and say otherwise, we should point that out to our brothers and sisters. No need to be mean or disrespectful, just “Here’s another time Trump has been caught tweeting a lie.
- Pray for repentance. Pray for deliverance. The high priest Samuel lived under a corrupt king, Saul. And when God rejected Saul as king, Saul still asked Samuel to pray for him. Samuel already knew, though, that he had that responsibility. He says, in 1 Samuel 12:23 “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way that is good and right.” Similarly, we have a responsibility (and to be frank, we need God’s intervention) to pray for Trump. We can pray for him to see his need - that he is a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness - and we can also pray that, should that happen, he sees what grace could look like in governance, and changes his policies. Those are both unlikely things - dramatically so, with what we know of his personality, but we serve a God of not just the unlikely, but the impossible. Romans 8:11 describes what God does in us, saying, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” The lesson is the same regarding Trump - if God can raise Jesus from the dead, God can penetrate the impenetrable crust of Donald Trump’s heart to make him see how he hurts people and how he needs to change. That said, it wouldn’t be wrong in any way to pray that Trump might see that he’s over his head and step down, as well - after all, that’s already evident to many Americans and most of the world. But we can pray for God to both change Donald Trump, and prompt him to resign (or Republicans to impeach him). Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.”
- Protect the powerless. However, as long as Trump is in power, we also have a Christian duty to stand for those who cannot speak for themselves, and to protect those who don’t have the power to protect themselves. This is a theme all throughout scripture, but it’s particularly clear in the Old Testament, when God was designing a country to work with his priorities. In Deuteronomy 27:19, Moses taught the people of Israel, ‘"Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow." In Deuteronomy 10:19, he told them, “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” Proverbs 19:17 makes clear our concern shouldn’t be for ourselves, but for the poor: “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed.” While I don’t know any reason we wouldn’t want God to be on the hook to our society due to our care and compassion for the poor, for the next 4 years while our government moves away from that, we should look for ways to fill that gap personally. This was a priority of Jesus (feeding the hungry, healing the sick - except those with pre-existing conditions), and also of his apostles. In Galatians 2:10, Paul recounts that they asked him to remember the poor, which he was already eager to do. James, the brother of Jesus, sums the whole thing up when he says, in James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” I can think of no clearer poster child for “polluted by the world” than Donald Trump, and we should, as followers of the Way, do all we can to provide a clear contrast to that in how we care for orphans, widows, refugees, and aliens.
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