Approximately nine days into Trump’s second term, most are convinced that God neither walks with him and neither does Christ (my opinion). Or maybe God does walk with Trump, but only in some bizarre alternate universe. It’s shocking to remember Trump eight years prior. Christ healed the sick and Trump stated he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and get away with it. Christ mocked the arrogant and Trump mocked John McCain. Christ heal disabilities and Trump the disabled (a disabled reporter). Christ was an immigrant, but the undocumented immigrant were likely “rapists.” Christ declared the truth will set you free. Trump has often twisted the truth, lied, and attacked those who would call out his falsehoods.
Washington Post fact-checkers catalogued nearly ten thousand false or misleading statements in Trump’s first term. Yet facts, facts don’t matter. Facebook (now Metta), Twitter (now X), and Truth Social presents their own set of facts. In Christ’s day, the facts He presented were regularly attacked. Two-thousand years later, facts change, by the minute. Breitbart, Fox News, NewsMax, One America News, Joe Rogan, etc. live and breathe falsehoods like Satan during Christ’s temptation.
The hardest part to understand is how Americans have accepted Trump. America accepts violence and hatred though it were a mantra from an unknown deity. Trump supporters believe to know their place in the struggle for justice, that “I want to be among the coalition of Trump faithful. Trump is from God and God is my true-north.” These decisive moments were personally curated, tweet-by-tweet. Yet the totality of all these moments molded their thoughts and misaligned the beauty of God to that which Trump called them to become.
Trump truth teaches one not to discern and not how to live according to the light. Rather, they taught -only hatred, that every moment that precedes the next moment, every lie seethes it’s own venom. Today’s GOP might say, we are not solely fiction’s creator; we are not the AI systems themselves. People are their own cocreatorrs. The problem is, that these past nine days or so have demonstrated that the demons of hate have sewn through a larger body of politic, that no matter the circumstance, the spiritual experience experienced is evil and the glorification of evil committed is attributed to the Holy Spirit (i.e., God, Christ).
I am convinced that we are called to live in the broader principle of love, that the courage of the Holy Spirit is to be brave and renounce the passion of hatred portrayed by the hearts of evil men. This power is a power greater than that found within. It is an audacious spirit of love that compels men to proactively discern, to put aside the politic of hatred, to put aside that which Trump (and supporters) calls ‘godly.’ Recognizing the ebb and flow of hatred helps one discern that for everything there is a season. And the season of hatred must end for mankind to survive.
We can either move toward Christ or move to the politic of profane. When a situation presents itself, you can either embrace the pure or swim with evil. God and Trump are opposite ends of the spectrum. Gun violence reduction, immigrant rights, racist slurs, defilement of God, etc., are not of God. It’s time too denounce hatred now. It’s how God wants us to live when no one is watching. It requires Christians to reclaim the sacred. We need to fight, even when we think the politic of evil has won. God is asking us to step up. Yes, that step is a choice. However, if we fail even to try, then all humanity will fail.
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If the sun comes up tomorrow, it is only because of men of good will. And that’s – that’s all there is between us and the devil.
~ Kenny O’Donnell ~