I try not to be too political, and I try pretty hard to stay out of the public political fray. I am convinced that Christians should be very circumspect about politics. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and we owe our ultimate personal allegiance only to the King of all Kings.
I am also mindful of the tradition of the prophets. They stood as God’s mouthpieces to God’s people and to the priests and kings who lead them. While they didn’t hold back in pronouncing God’s judgments and warnings on surrounding nations, they directed most of their attention to God’s people, the nations of Israel and Judah.
I also have to note that the nations of Israel and Judah are unique in the history of God and man. The United States of America is not a nation of God’s chosen people like the nations of Israel and Judah were.
(The current state of Israel isn’t either! See the responses of Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, to a pointed questions put to him about the status of nation of Israel today in the postscript to this blog article.)
There is much I could say about these things, but I want to get to my topic today. God’s prophetic voice is most prominently focused on His own people, wherever they are situated. Thus, Jesus often confronted the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees and Sadducees – though he hardly said a word about the Romans who were the governing authorities in Judea.
Similarly, I believe God’s attention is on the church in America, and I am focused on Donald Trump only because many American Christians have claimed him as their champion. Biden, and Clinton, and Obama didn’t claim to be aligned with the church, but Trump does.
Therefore, when I read the following headline in the New York Times recently, For Those Deemed Trump’s Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear, I took notice. The statement that Donald Trump has vowed to exact vengeance caught my attention.
Trump’s public warnings to those who opposed him, searched his home, prosecuted him, etc. are have weight behind them because they are characteristic of the man. People have taken them deadly seriously, including Joe Biden who pardoned a record number of people in his last days of office, including preemptive pardons of his own family members and people on Trump’s hit list.
I could say a lot about these pardons, also, but I won’t do that right now. I will only say that the threats Trump has made are not empty, and conducting himself in that way has repercussions for both parties and the health and future of politics in America. “What goes around comes around,” as the saying goes.
My focus, though, is on what this means for the church and how we live out being salt and light, making disciples to the ends of the world, and living consistent with the kingdom of heaven on earth. Do we not have some responsibility to God, the Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, to speak prophetically about the state of the church and of its complicity in the rise to power of Donald Trump?
Continue reading “Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth Donald Trump?”
Navigating by Faith 