Category: Politics

Who Do We Obey? Augustine, Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church, and the Guidance of Revelation

A choice between two cities

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The book of Revelation is often treated as a puzzle about the future to be solved. But for the early church—and for Christians living under pressure—it functioned as something far more prescient: a guide and encouragement to be faithful when political power demands allegiance that belongs to God alone.

That is why the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church matters so deeply for Christians today. Their struggle was not about partisan politics or policy disagreements. It was about lordship. Who has the right to command the Christian conscience? Who gets our obedience when the state demands what Christ forbids—or forbids what Christ commands?

When Obedience Becomes Worship

The crisis in Nazi Germany was not simply that the government was unjust. It was that the state demanded moral and spiritual loyalty. National identity became sacred. Political obedience became a virtue. Silence and complicity in the face of injustice was praised as faithfulness.

Scripture warns us that this is always how idolatry works.

“No one can serve two masters.” (Matthew 6:24)

In the City of God, St. Augustine contrasts the City of man and the City of God. We owe our allegiance to the City of God, though God calls us to live in harmony, as best as we can, with the City of man. Loving God is first, but loving man is like it. We cannot love God and fail to love people who God loves and created in His image.

Revelation is encouragement and exhortation to us when the City of man exhibits the characteristics of the beast. Revelation describes the beast as a power that compels allegiance to itself in everyday life through economic pressure, social belonging, and fear of exclusion:

“So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.”

(Revelation 13:17)

The issue is not technology. The issue is worship – your heart, your devotion, your allegiance.

Bonhoeffer: Discipleship Is Visible

Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw clearly what many Christians hoped to avoid: there is no such thing as private faith when public injustice is at stake. Throughout the Prophets who repeatedly warned God’s people about coming judgment, the issues were twofold: idolatry and injustice.

Idolatry and injustice always go hand in hand. Augustine said that our true allegiance is revealed by what one loves, serves, and obeys.

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God even to the contempt of self.”

(City of God XIV.28)

Injustice always flows from misdirected worship – misdirected loyalty, priority, and desire. Augustine called injustice robbery, because it robs people made in the image of God of what God intends for them.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warned against what he famously called “cheap grace”—grace that forgives sin without transforming obedience. Transforming obedience is the kind of obedience that forsakes self-interest out of love for God and man.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

That call is not only about personal holiness. It is about allegiance. Bonhoeffer understood that following Jesus means concrete obedience, even when that obedience is costly, unpopular, or dangerous.

Faith that quietly accommodates injustice, he argued, is not faithfulness at all. God “upholds the cause of the oppressed,” and “watches over the foreigner,” and “sustains the fatherless and widow….” (Psalm 144:6-9) That is God’s heart, and that character marks those who love and serve Him.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

1 John 4:20

The Confessing Church: Saying “No” to False Authority

In 1934, pastors and theologians gathered to issue the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Their message was simple and bold:

“Jesus Christ… is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

This was not abstract theology. It was a refusal to allow the state to define truth, identity, or moral obligation. It was a rejection of the idea that national destiny or political leaders could speak with the authority of God the Father. The City of man is not the City of God.

In the language of Revelation, the Confessing Church refused to bear the name of the beast. They chose instead to bear the name of the Lamb:

“They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” (Revelation 14:4)

The Danger of Complicity

Later in his life, Bonhoeffer pressed further. He argued that the church sins not only by acting wrongly, but by failing to act when injustice reigns.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”

According to Bonhoeffer, Revelation 14 warns that worship of the beast is not limited to overt acts of loyalty. It includes participation in systems that oppose God’s justice—systems that reward conformity and punish faithfulness—systems that oppress the poor, needy, foreigner, widow, and orphan.

“If anyone worships the beast… he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath.” (Revelation 14:9–10)

This is not a threat meant to terrify believers. It is a mercy meant to awaken them. We must not give our allegiance and our heart to Empire – the beast in our age. We must give our hearts, desires, and allegiance to God alone.

Revelation as a Call to Endurance

Revelation does not tell Christians to seize power. Revelation gives us the hope that the Lamb who was Slain will prevail despite the chaos, injustice, and oppression that reigns in a world controlled the beast. The urgent message is to endure patiently and be faithful. (Rev, 13:10)

“Here is the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

Endurance means refusing to let fear, convenience, or comfort decide our allegiance or obedience. It means trusting that faithfulness matters, even when it costs us socially, economically, or personally.

Bonhoeffer lived—and died—by that conviction. We can too.

Why This Still Matters

The beast in Revelation does not always look monstrous. Sometimes it looks respectable. Sometimes it speaks the language of order, morality, and security. Sometimes it rewards the loyalty of silence.

The question for Christians has never changed: Who is Lord?

Revelation, Augustine, Bonhoeffer, and the witness of the Confessing Church remind us that allegiance is not just what we say—it is what we do, what we tolerate, and what we refuse.

“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

For What Did Charlie Kirk Die?

Was Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr?

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Savannah, GA, USA — 2025: The US flag was at half-mast at the Savannah City Hall dome on September 13, 2025, to honor the memory of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed on September 10. (iStock Photos)

I hope you will stick with me on this one and give me some grace. I have let my thoughts on the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk sit on the shelf these last three months to let the dust settle and the emotions wane.

I began writing on the topic when the awful news of his murder was still echoing loudly like shock waves in the air. I began writing the next day, after waking in the middle of the night with a question floating in my mind: Why did Charlie Kirk die?

Different people have different answers to that question, no doubt, but it seemed to be a question prompted by God to me. It challenged me to take that question back to God in prayer.

As I engaged God, the question changed slightly to this: For what did Charlie Kirk die? That question has hung in the air for me the last three months now, though the shock waves have settled into a kind of numbness. Many people have “moved on”, others are entrenched in the narratives they formed long ago, but I think the question still yearns for an answer that months of quiet contemplation might provide.

Continue reading “For What Did Charlie Kirk Die?” →

Be Like the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times

The Kingdom of God is among us and it is yet to come

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I recently finished a review of the of history of the blogging on this site: Looking Back at 13 Years of Navigating By Faith. One article stands high above the rest in the sheer number of people who have read/viewed it.

I wrote that article, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today?, during Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign. Christian support for Donald Trump was characterized by a sense of urgency and high stakes. State COVID restrictions jeopardized religious liberty. BLM aroused woke, liberal, mobs in streets around the country. Christians sounded the alarm that people of faith would be canceled by the most anti-faith Democratic ticket in years if Trump didn’t win.

Prominent Christian leaders like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham argued that Trump was a “strongman” needed to protect the nation from “anarchy” and “socialism.” Jeffress excused Trump’s obvious flaws, saying that American Christians didn’t need a “Sunday School teacher” but a “fighter” who would protect Christian interests in a hostile culture. Lance Wallnau framed Trump as a modern King Cyrus—the Persian king used by God to protect His people and restore them to the promised land.

Support for Donald Trump was increasingly framed as a battle against “darkness” and “anti-Christian” forces. While many traditional evangelicals focused on policy, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) was mobilized by prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the “Seven Mountain Mandate.” Dozens of self-identified prophets in this network insisted that Trump’s re-election was divinely mandated in a cosmic battle between good and evil controlled by a demonically influenced “deep state.” The current was strong, and a large number of Christians were swept along with it.

A conversation with my best friend from college, who I loved more than a brother, and who I trusted implicitly, left me in full spiritual crisis mode. He expressed his continued support of Trump on the basis of those prophetic claims predicting another presidential victory and the belief that God ordained Donald Trump for this time. My friend urged my to be like the sons of Issachar “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” (1 Chronicles 12:32)

I have a healthy respect for God’s ability to speak through people in what we call prophecy. The Apostle Paul commands us not to despise prophecy, but to test everything, hold fast to what is good, and abstain from every evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22) I resolved to give Donald Trump another look and to reconsider him.

I had written in 2020 about wolves in sheep’s clothing with Donald Trump expressly in mind. Jesus said we would know falsehood by its fruit, and the fruit I saw in Donald Trump belied the claims of God’s providential blessing.

That a president is not a pastor made some sense. God can use anyone, even a donkey, right? Maybe Trump is like the Persian King Cyrus who is divinely appointed to restore the Christian heritage of the United States….

A year earlier, in 2019, I reflected on those claims that Trump is like a King Cyrus, and I came to a different conclusion. Trump seemed to me more like a King Saul, the king God’s people wanted – the king they wanted because they did not trust God. They wanted a king like all the other nations, though the Prophet Samuel warned them against it. God gave them the king His people wanted, even though they were rejecting God to ask for a king:

“[W]hen they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.‘”

1 Samuel 8:6-9

God gave them the king they wanted in the same way that God gives people over “to the sinful desires of their heats.” (Romans 1:24) The people were rejecting God as their king, so God gave them over to the king they wanted.

People of that day might have assumed that God was blessing them to give them the king they wanted, but that was not the case. Samuel warned them against it, but they insisted anyway.

King Saul was rebellious, insecure, self-absorbed, and psychotic. He failed to obey God’s commands. He became obsessed with his power and reputation among the people, and he became jealous of David.

Though Saul remained king, God had already rejected him and anointed David to succeed him. Saul tried to take David’s life multiple times in fits of jealous rage, and David escaped into the wilderness.

This is where the Sons of Issachar entered the picture. Though Saul was still king, they “understood the times.” They could see the proverbial writing on the wall. They knew that David was God’s man, and Saul’s reign was ending.

Many people have argued that Donald Trump is like the foreign king, Cyrus, who protected and funded the nation of Israel to return to the Promised Land. I have argued that Donald Trump is not like the foreign king, Cyrus, but like the Israelite King Saul. Donald Trump is the king that God’s people wanted.

Continue reading “Be Like the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times” →

When the Church Loses Its Prophetic Voice

Biblical Authority, Political Power, and the Temptations of Influence

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The failure of the German Protestant church to mount a decisive resistance to Nazism has long troubled western Christian conscience. Historians rightly warn against simplistic explanations, but one conclusion has proven difficult to escape: long before Hitler rose to power, the church’s theological confidence had already been weakened. When the state demanded ultimate loyalty, many pastors and congregations lacked the moral clarity and will to refuse.

The nineteenth-century Tübingen School of theology did not cause Nazism. Its scholars were not proto-fascists, nor did they anticipate racial ideology or totalitarian politics. Yet their historical-critical approach to Scripture unintentionally contributed to a Protestant culture in which the Bible increasingly functioned as an object of study rather than a source of commanding authority. When political myth replaced moral truth, the church was unprepared to stand against it because the church had long ago lost its biblical, moral footing.

History does not repeat itself mechanically. The present American situation is not Weimar Germany, and the MAGA movement is not Nazism. Still, history can illuminate how the happenings within the church influence how the church interacts with political culture. That raises a difficult but necessary question for American evangelicals today: what weaknesses in our own theology and habits of thought have made many of us susceptible to the distortions of political power?

The answer is not that evangelicalism has repeated the errors of liberal Protestantism. In many ways, we have made opposite mistakes. But the result—a diminished capacity for prophetic resistance—bears an unsettling resemblance.

Authority Dissolved: The Tübingen Lesson

The Tübingen School, led by Ferdinand Christian Baur in the mid-nineteenth century, treated Scripture primarily as a historical artifact shaped by competing early Christian communities. Biblical texts were analyzed as records of theological conflict rather than as a unified witness to divine revelation. The command and authority of Scripture was diminished, and the sacred became profane. The trajectory of the academy spilled into and watered down the vitality of Christian impact in Protestant Germany.

Clergy trained in historical criticism often hesitated to proclaim Scripture normatively. The Bible remained important, but its authority was qualified, softened, and translated into general ethical ideals compatible with modern culture. Christianity became morally earnest but theologically cautious and politically unimportant.

By the early twentieth century, much of German Protestantism lacked the confidence to say an unambiguous “No” to the state. The problem was not simply fear or cowardice. It was uncertainty—whether God had spoken definitively enough to authorize resistance when power spoke with confidence and force.

Karl Barth saw this clearly. In 1933, as the German church accommodated itself to the Nazi regime, Barth insisted that the church exists only under the authority of God’s self-revelation. Where that authority is weakened, the church becomes vulnerable to captivity by the state.

The lesson is sobering: when Scripture no longer stands above culture, culture will soon stand above the church. Today we can say of Nazi Germany and the church alike, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) But, the impact was devastating on Germany, Jews, Europe, and the world at that time, and its effects rumble into the present time.

I do not want to suggest that we can equate Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s to the United States of America in the 2010’s and 2020’s. Still, there are parallels between the exercise of State power in the vacuum left by weakened theology that bear some attention.

Continue reading “When the Church Loses Its Prophetic Voice” →

The Mother Mirror: How Susie Wiles Became Donald Trump’s Surrogate Matriarch

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by Daniel Wolfe, J.D., Ph.D.

(The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any employer, organization, or institution with which the author is affiliated. )

“Trust in God and be true to yourself.” — Donald Trump (attributed to his mother)


In a career defined by glitz, volatility, and domination, Donald Trump has rarely ceded power or emotional intimacy to anyone—especially not to women. And yet, two women stand apart from the parade of advisers, media figures, and family members who have passed through his orbit: Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, his late mother; and Susie Wiles, his current White House Chief of Staff and perhaps the most enduring political influence in his life.

From a psychodynamic standpoint, their connection is more than incidental. Wiles’s quiet dominance, maternal distance, and unflappable loyalty appear to mirror key psychological traits that Trump associated with his mother—a woman he revered, idealized, and never fully reached. As Trump now enters what may be the final chapter of his public life, Wiles is not merely a staffer. She is, in many respects, a surrogate matriarch—a stabilizing figure who satisfies his need for emotional containment, maternal loyalty, and internal order.

The Queen from Tong: Mary Anne MacLeod Trump’s Silent Influence

Born in 1912 in the Village of Tong on Scotland’s windswept Isle of Lewis, Mary Anne MacLeod was the tenth of ten children in a Gaelic-speaking, deeply Presbyterian household. The family home had no indoor plumbing, and her childhood was shaped by poverty, discipline, and religious rigor. At 18, she boarded the SS Transylvania and sailed to New York City, alone, with $50 to her name and a stated intention to become a domestic servant.

What followed was a dramatic social ascent. Mary Anne met Fred Trump, a rising real estate developer, at a party. They married in 1936 and had five children. Though she never shed her Scottish accent, she fully embraced American prosperity and Protestant respectability. She became active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, volunteered in hospitals, and dressed with regal precision.

As reported by journalist Mary Pilon in The New Yorker, friends and family members remembered Mary Anne MacLeod Trump as “tight-lipped,” “polished,” “proper,” “unassuming,” “friendly,” and “pleasant”—a reserved woman of dignity and discipline, but not demonstratively affectionate. Trump himself noted her deep reverence for public ceremony, stating, “Her loyalty to Scotland was incredible. She respected and loved the Queen.” He also credited her with influencing his “sense of showmanship.” (Pilon, 2016).

In her memoir Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump—herself a clinical psychologist—describes how her grandmother’s illness and retreat from family caregiving duties created emotional voids. Mary and her siblings took on caretaking roles in her absence, leading to feelings of abandonment and shaping Donald Trump’s later emotional defenses. She further details how Fred Trump Sr.’s emotional detachment and controlling behavior created insecurity in the family and contributed to Donald Trump’s narcissistic tendencies.

And yet Donald idolized his mother. “Part of her disinterest was, I believe, interpreted by Donald as exclusivity,” Mary Trump writes. “She was mysterious. The less she said, the more he needed to earn her attention.” From a psychodynamic perspective, this creates a powerful early template: a mother who is emotionally withheld but idealized—instilling in the child a lifelong yearning to gain her approval, or to replicate her presence through proxies.

In object relations theory, such a mother becomes an internalized object—a kind of psychic icon. She represents containment, elegance, structure—but also loss and emotional distance. The boy grows into a man who seeks out women who resemble her not in warmth, but in silence, dignity, and control.

The Strategist in the Shadows: Who Is Susie Wiles?

Susie Wiles is no stranger to male power. The daughter of legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, she grew up surrounded by high-stakes masculinity. But unlike many women in Trump’s orbit—Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Kayleigh McEnany, Karoline Leavitt—Wiles is not a media figure. She is a tactician. Her professional life has been spent in the background, managing Republican campaigns with ruthless efficiency, from Jack Kemp to Rick Scott to Ron DeSantis—and finally to Donald Trump.

She first joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to oversee Florida, and her work was credited as critical to his win. She returned in 2020 and again in 2024. In the chaos of Trump’s third presidential campaign, Wiles outlasted and outmaneuvered more combative or flamboyant aides. By 2025, she was named Chief of Staff—the first woman to ever hold the role under Trump. And perhaps the only one who truly commands his respect.

What makes Susie Wiles unique is not charisma or ideological purity but emotional restraint. She doesn’t grovel. She doesn’t scold. She doesn’t leak to the press. According to Politico Magazine and West Wing Playbook, Wiles is a discreet, disciplined strategist. She rarely seeks publicity and is consistently portrayed as a “steady hand” who effectively manages Trump’s impulses and internal chaos.

From a psychological standpoint, this demeanor taps directly into the mother archetype that Trump internalized: a woman who offers structure without intrusion, loyalty without dependence. She doesn’t try to be his friend or surrogate daughter. She is, psychologically, his mother in political form: elegant, efficient, and emotionally self-contained.

Recent reporting in Vanity Fair highlights the candid nature of Wiles’s own reflections on President Trump and members of his Cabinet, revealing an unusually frank assessment of internal dynamics, including comments on Trump’s personality and other senior officials—remarks that drew swift criticism from within the administration as being misrepresented or taken out of context. Vanity Fair journalist Chris Whipple, who conducted months of on-the-record interviews with Wiles, subsequently defended the accuracy of his piece, noting that all conversations were recorded and verified.

The Vanity Fair profile also underscores Wiles’s complex role: though she offered unusually candid characterizations of Trump and others in his orbit—comments that were later disputed as being selectively framed—she remained publicly loyal, reiterating her defense of Trump’s leadership and the administration’s accomplishments. This juxtaposition further illustrates the delicate psychological balance Wiles maintains: revealing enough about internal pressures to demonstrate credibility, yet steadfast in her alignment with Trump’s public persona.

The Vanity Fair interviews portray Wiles as central to both decision-making and narrative control inside the West Wing, a portrayal that has attracted debate not only about the content of her remarks but also about the media framing of her role—revealing once again how Wiles both shapes and buffers Trump’s inner circle.

A Psychodynamic Reading: Maternal Transference in Power Relationships

In classical Freudian terms, Wiles may represent a maternal transference object—a figure onto whom Trump projects unresolved feelings and unmet needs from childhood. Where Mary Anne withheld affection, Wiles withholds emotion. Where Mary Anne offered structured approval, Wiles offers structured control. And unlike Trump’s past advisers, Wiles never threatens his fragile ego. She doesn’t seek glory. She simply stays—a feat few others have achieved.


Psychological profiles consistently depict Donald Trump as a grandiose, high-energy, low-agreeableness figure—a volatile combination described by Dr. Dan McAdams as “sky-high extraversion … rock-bottom agreeableness … and grandiose narcissism” (McAdams, 2016). Indirect diagnostic work (Immelman & Griebie, 2020) places him squarely in narcissistic, dominant, and impulsive personality patterns. Mental health experts in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump warn of malignant narcissism—a severe form characterized by interpersonal cruelty and paranoia (Lee, 2019). Clinicians like Craig Malkin and theorists such as Kohut and Bosson also point to the deeper emotional void underlying Trump’s persona—one that maternal transference figures may uniquely address. Therapists such as Wendy Behary similarly argue for a behavioral-based understanding of his narcissistic structure.

Nancy McWilliams (2011) describes narcissistic personality organization as marked by internal fragility, frequent use of idealization and devaluation, and a reliance on external validation. She explains that analysts working with this type often become unconscious “containers” for projected emotions, experiencing emotional obliteration, boredom, or invisibility.

As interpreted from McWilliams, transference figures often exert their power not through what they do, but through how they resonate. They become stand-ins for an early internal object—particularly in individuals who, like Trump, display signs of narcissistic personality structure: grandiosity, need for adulation, fear of shame, and an unconscious desire for omnipotent control.

What narcissistic individuals crave, McWilliams notes, is not just admiration—but a “containing other”: someone who does not collapse in the face of their outbursts, and who does not betray them by seeking autonomy. Wiles plays that role impeccably. She withstands Trump’s rage, channels it, and survives it. She offers maternal containment, not romantic or filial rivalry. That is what keeps her in his orbit.

Other advisers have challenged Trump (John Kelly), manipulated him (Steve Bannon), or infantilized him (Rudy Giuliani). Wiles does none of that. Instead, she mirrors back the qualities Trump yearned to see in his mother: discretion, loyalty, restraint, and elegance.

The Politics of Maternal Containment

This is not just a psychological curiosity. It is a political reality. Wiles has arguably had more sustained influence over Trump than any adviser since the beginning of his political career. She shaped the tone of his 2024 campaign—more disciplined, less erratic. She consolidated staffing, minimized legal exposure, and even managed access to the President.

Unlike previous chiefs of staff, Wiles does not appear to negotiate with Trump’s narcissism. She regulates it. That regulation—the ability to soothe without submitting—represents a maternal function in psychodynamic theory. And in Wiles, Trump may have finally found the mother he idealized but never emotionally possessed.

It also explains why he hasn’t turned on her. Trump, infamous for discarding aides with theatrical vengeance, has remained steadfastly loyal to Wiles. Even when others within his inner circle reportedly questioned her influence, he resisted. Just as a child resists separating from a “good enough” mother (in Winnicottian terms), Trump clings to Wiles not just as a strategist, but as a psychic anchor. In effect, Wiles might stabilize Trump not by commanding him, but by quietly containing him, as a good-enough mother does for an emotionally vulnerable child.

A Closing Reflection: The Boy and the Queen

As Donald Trump enters the final act of his storied and polarizing career, it is Susie Wiles—not his children, not his ideological acolytes—who quietly holds the reins. She does so not by reflecting Trump’s aggression, but by embodying his mother’s mystery: a woman whose silence commands, whose order contains, whose loyalty never fully soothes the ache it addresses.

In Wiles, Trump may see a second chance to earn the approval he never quite captured from Mary Anne. And in his loyalty to her, one glimpses the enduring truth of psychodynamic theory: that the past is never past. It is alive, enacted, and dressed in new clothes—this time, in a red blazer, seated quietly in the West Wing, holding the world’s most unmanageable man in the palm of her maternal hand.

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