At a gathering in the White House just before Easter, President Trump was lauded, if not anointed, with the words, “you are the greatest champion of the faith that we have ever seen in a President.” So spoke Paula White-Cain, the President’s chief spiritual advisor, at a gathering with other supportive pastors.They prayed over him, as they identified the President as the “shepherd of mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them”.
Not long after, an AI generated an image of Trump dressed in 1st century robes healing a diseased man, which suggested that Trump is the second coming of Christ. Not so, said some of his most ardent advocates. President Trump is not portrayed as a stand-in for Jesus, they said. Rather,it is a depiction of a doctor healing a patient (a claim that the President made before the image was taken down); But many of his other supporters, some of whom may have been in the White House with him during Holy Week, felt otherwise.They felt forsaken and betrayed. “Blasphemy” has been echoing through the chambers of the MAGA universe in response to the post. Blasphemy is an act of insulting, showing contempt, or demonstrating a lack of reverence for God.The image of Trump posing as Jesus, along with the subsequent very public theological dispute with Pope Leo, who has challenged Trump on his aggressive and immoral posture on the Iran War, reinforces the charge of blasphemy, if not heresy.
Before piling on in this criticism of the President, which is getting easier to do, it is important to engage in some biblical context setting. The Bible identifies Adam and Eve as the first man and first woman. While their existence in the Garden of Eden cannot be substantiated in history, nevertheless their story reflects a timeless truth. Adam and Eve lived with the hubris that they were masters of their environment; that they didn’t need God; so they need not honor God. That they were God, which is tantamount to blasphemy – an insult to the God who created them.
We have been acting with that hubris ever since.
Much of Christian theology claims that the story of Adam and Eve’s blasphemy was – and is, the original moment of original sin, a scar that continues to afflict us with its own unique poison. I do not subscribe to the doctrine of original sin; instead, I embrace the Jewish origin of sin, which is identified when God acknowledges that the “inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Genesis 8:21). In other words, we all have the potential to act in evil and blasphemous ways, but we are not inherently evil or sinful. This understanding suggests that sin isn’t something we are born with, but learn from a young age — when we are tempted, as Adam and Eve were, to claim ourselves as the center of the universe; to insist on our own way as God’s way; to resist the imposition of rules.
Like many of us, I have often thought – and have sometimes said, that I am smart enough, strong enough, connected enough – and resourced with electronic devices enough that I can make it on my own.This notion can lead me – and those of us who give in to this temptation, to a toxic combination of an inflated hubris and a cynical distrust of others. I, and those of us who carry out this dysfunctional view of self, others, and the world, are then reduced to living within grandiose and reactive silos. The corrective to this is to recognize this temptation (which is offered from more platforms and relationships than we can count) and then resist it by giving ourselves over – to submit — to a presence outside of ourselves. For those who live with a religious faith, that means giving ourselves over to a Creator, however the Creator is named, and discerning and doing the Creator’s will; something Adam and Eve did not do. For those who live outside a religious faith, it means giving ourselves over to something beyond self: care of the earth, justice for those who are oppressed, providing succor and support to the least and the lost (which I would argue is the Creator’s will).
My mother would often tell the story of my fourth birthday party, when I was acting out and being difficult. “Be a good boy”, she admonished me. My response was immediate and harsh – so I am told: “I don’t want to be a good boy.” Willful petulance is a trait that is often difficult to discard.
President Trump not only refuses to discard his willful petulance; he refuses to recognize it. And he has prodigious resources at his disposal: a military behemoth, an economy he thinks he can control, an electorate that he continually aspires to manipulate – to continue that petulance. His hubris is, to my mind, beyond historical precedent. His capacity to express or experience shame is virtually nonexistent – to a degree that he can reinvent the Constitution, curse his opponents, seek every opportunity to demonstrate his status beyond the reach of truth itself, and revel in bringing destruction to an ancient civilization.
What is especially troubling about all the chaos Trump is generating (as one friend of mine said to me, ‘He won’t leave us alone”) is the support from so many people and leaders of the Christian faith who seem to have anointed him as a 21st century savior. It is a transactional approach to the President – ‘you support us, we will support you,” which reflects a transactional approach to faith itself. I have long resisted this temptation to reduce the journey of faith to a simple equation: ‘accept Jesus as your Savior, and you will be saved’. And its corollary: ‘if you don’t, you won’t.’ That approach inevitably leads to a binary of winners and losers, which is the transaction that Trump feasts on – to the diminishment and destruction of far too many.
The life of faith is not a series of transactions – of seeking the best advantage. The life of faith – be it religious on non-religious, is a journey – of identifying and then resisting the temptations that make us the centers of the universe; temptations that make us think that we matter and they don’t, and temptations that lead us to blasphemy.
Rather, we need to follow in God’s ways by lifting up, committing, and loving humanity. All of it.
