“I just want to find 11,780 votes.”
‘You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.’ Ezekiel 34: 3-4
My willingness to speak out against our ‘best hope’ for a free, and ‘Christian,’ America has not been warmly met by my Christian peers. I know I am in the minority; and I mourn. Yet again, our chosen one, the one who will fill the judiciary with suitable people who will put the brakes on abortion and protect other various ‘Christian’ values, demonstrates his lawless insanity. We have embraced an unstable, corrupt liar as our representative. Our witness is gone because we side with the wicked.
When confronted with an opposing reality, my peers often freely admit Trump is not a good man. If he is not a ‘good’ man, then what is he? I can see and hear blood pressures rise as I press the issue; yet the faithful fall back to ‘faith’ in prophecies, the details of which they often don’t know the first thing about. The world of rumor on Facebook and other social media platforms ‘form up’ into some nebulous quagmire of sordid ‘facts’ to which ‘something’ must be done. Our prophets teach us that this ‘something’ is Trump. With evil shepherds come the feast.
Need we do a Bible study about what the character of what a good leader ought be? Does the Bible, a messy collection of stories about very flawed human beings, advocate an ‘ends-justify-the-means’ approach to ethics? Getting down to it then, is this, surely ‘perfect,’ phone call justified towards the ‘higher’ goal of keeping this man in office? In the old world, in a free Republic, the (arguably) most powerful man in the world calling an underling to threaten him with possible legal consequences unless he overthrow a legally certified election result would be considered an overtly corrupt, and criminal, act. But not in the new world evidently.
Those in the Christian Right advocate for authoritarianism because their prophets have (first) conjured up out of thin air, an authoritarian Jesus who is coming back to literally melt the faces off the wicked (That’s what happens at the conclusion of the ‘Left Behind’ series, which many have taken as Gospel.) We’ve cheered stories of the the Prince of Peace’s metamorphosis into a God of War in a ‘yet-to-come’ dispensation. No longer is the vision of the sword which precedes from His mouth (Revelation 1:16) a metaphor for that instrument which divides truth from falsity, ‘For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thought and intentions of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12), but has become literally an instrument of bloodshed. This usurpation of the message of peace by evil teachers and prophets who titillate and sensationalize, telling stories involving little or loss (or risk) to ‘faithful’ Christians as they play out, in order to sell books and conferences which, getting down to it, justify our collective desire for revenge against those who (we’ve perceived) oppress us. Now that it’s been more than 70 years since the re-birth of Israel, the commonly understood clock in the various pre-millennial dispensational frameworks has run out. But don’t worry, dispensationalism itself need not be discarded as post-millennialism can be plugged into this dispensational framework as well; and successively, it is in the process of doing so.
The ‘Left Behind’ stuff is not harmless fun, or whimsical speculation. The bloodthirsty pre-millennial eschatology has prepared the ground for us to embrace a man who we’ve been told will restore the ‘fortunes’ of Israel (a cruel joke because according to a majority of dispensationalist teaching about 80% of the Jewish people get slaughtered in the deal,) strengthen families (but not by serving as an example,) and perhaps save a few babies (by making abortions much more dangerous for poor women.) We’ve committed ourselves to power, political power, to meet the conditions of our mission. Economic might is an important part of this, so the ‘faithful’ will cite Trump’s ‘flawless’ economic performance to bolster their case for the necessity of tolerating a bad man; widows, orphans, and aliens be damned since it seems clear that God likes the tallest walls, badass vehicles to deliver bombs, and the massive accumulation of wealth into the hands of the top 1% —the finest among us. I suppose then we should white out this little teaching, ‘Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice’ (Proverbs 16:8.) But we don’t believe that do we? The ‘Christianity’ I see being taught today in the vast Christian media empires is, in my understanding of what I’ve studied with my own eyes, unrecognizable from that which I see is taught in the Bible. The truth, heart, mercy, and charity has been cut out to be replaced by counterfeits; if those qualities in true form remained, there is no way we could tolerate such an openly wicked man as Donald Trump.
‘Tis the human thing to justify and make excuses. We are lazy. Far easier to wrap up our ‘worship’ into manageable entertainment packages, to show up to receive the marching orders from the proper authorities, to pay the proper tributes to Caesar (whom we’ve hired to do our work,) to blame immigrants, Muslims, and homosexuals for all of our problems, so we may then think of ourselves as good Christians properly submitted. Is this really it?
Black and white worlds are easier to manage, are they not? But such ‘black and white’ worlds are illusions, just like the shadows cast in Plato’s Cave. Our leaders feed off our ability to produce bullshit and to then use it to their advantage. As I would reframe the imagery in The Republic, the light of the fire is the conglomeration of all our speculations casting chaotic waves of light upon our prison’s walls. Those would manage us in authoritarian fashion would manipulate that light to cast recognizable patterns on those walls in the form of shadows. (The AI algorithms in social media apps make this easy.) This casting of shadows is seen to benefit everyone as order is maintained through both alleviating boredom as those shadows have entertainment value; and the stories the shadows tell can also propose a shared purpose for our existence. The world outside the cave is scary, bright, and disorienting with its many shades and colors; nothing is fixed.
The individualist idealist, the philosopher, seeks to lead people out of the cave by trying to convince them their cavernous world is a prison of illusion which we all actively maintain for the sake of comfort. Most, perhaps, would prefer the safety of the cave. We could postulate that what little light flickers within the cave is at least our light, the greatest among us cast the best shadows to tell the finest stories. Those ‘greatest people’ would have a little incentive to lead anyone out of that environment since in the ‘free’ outside world the audience is not captive to be content with your shadows alone; there is too much to see in such a world—our greatest would lose their audience and hence their power. Outside the cave is a dangerous yet wonderous world filled with the promise of pain with the hope of healing. How much easier is it to remain in the shadow world to hear the story that our faith, if embraced, is balm which heals our every wound right now—you just have to have the right faith. It’s a nice story; but is it true? These kinds of shadows enslave us all.
In the ‘real’ world, the light is blinding and uncontrollable as it is not our own. We can learn about it, but we cannot make it. Truth just is. The scary thing about that truth is what it requires from us; it requires that we relinquish the illusion of control over history, over people—as Tolkien expressed in the overriding ethic of Middle Earth, the violation of Free Will to make us all servants of the masters is the closest thing to evil. God, whose character is depicted in Tolkien’s cosmology as Eru llύvatar, the One Allfather, did not create us to be puppets of anyone, including Himself.
But we do a fine job making puppets of each other by casting our own shadows on the wall to describe who God is and what He wants from us. The process of ascension now involves evolving from being generators and reflectors of little flickers of light to become large enough to use those flickers to cast your own shadows on the wall to really grab the attention of our peers. This to us is power. Through all the struggle described in the Bible, the reoccurring theme that God says He wants from us is mercy not sacrifice. He made it clear He hates lies, bribes, corruption, and injustice. He sent many prophets and finally His own Son to free us from oppression. Yet, among our own, oppressors have repeatedly risen among us to make up stories, to cast shadows, to keep us entertained within the prison of our own making. We cheer ‘The Wall,’ cages for children, the making of orphans, the pardons of butchers, liars, obstructors of justice, conspirators to defraud, perjurers, and the list goes on and on. Trump pardons his friends; mercy, or making political statements about criminal justice reform, has nothing to do with it. This is corrupt. Now we have a recording (Fake News! Fake News!) of a phone call from Trump to Georgia’s Secretary of State to ‘find’ 11,780 Trump votes, after the results have been legally certified by the laws of that state (which means Raffensperger would have to violate the law to ‘find’ those votes,) else face possible consequences (As vague at that sounds, it is still a threat from the President of the United State made to another official soliciting that official to break the law for the President’s benefit.) How on this green earth can you, in good conscience, support this wicked man? It is corruption, criminal solicitation, period. Our prophets have taught us to put the stamp of approval on this; and we gladly do, smug in our own righteousness that, after all, we’re pro-life. We justify this abomination, by bouncing around in our echo-chambers, parroting all the little possibilities that a vast secret cabal has spirited away all the evidence of massive, millions of votes, fraud, until ‘everyone’ (who means anything anyway) believes it. We applaud breaking the law to appease the empty assertions of (when it comes down to it) one man—the figurehead of the whole stinking mess. We’ve all been hit in the face with firehose of falsity for so long, that our discernment has been destroyed. We are too weary to even try to resist. All we’ve got left is to make our commitments to those who cast the shadows for there is no ‘real’ world; we given up on it (such a world is just a figment of some weird rebel people’s imagination.) In the mind of my enemies, I’m just a vastly lesser shadow caster. Trump casts a huge shadow upon us all—that’s the power of marketing.
I’m afraid this latest evidence of Trump’s corruption will not matter one whit in the mind of the good Christian. The commitment has been made; and I fear for the safety of our nation if millions of people honestly believe the lie that the election has been stolen. Evidence no longer matters. So dear Christians, shall we once again welcome the days where ‘evidence’ seen in dreams is admissible in a court of law? We’ve been there (Salem Witch Trials), and it seems we’re returning as we believe all the stuff which comes up out of nothing for Trump to then cast his shadows to his benefit. What Trump farts out of mouth is evidence now; and you support this—everyone is liar but Trump.
Psychologically it makes sense. We’ve been elevating liars (and those who are just plain ignorant but project a good spiritual aura) in our faith for a long time now. Our faith is now a fine home for charlatans. Apostle Paula, prophet and brother Kenneth, what have you for us to learn today? Oh, that was a fine conversation you had with God! Trump is our man? Okay; we’ll form up the lines. Apostle Simmons, please tell us again about your trip to heaven’s library where you were tempted to lift John 22 off the shelf! Well, it’s a good thing you submitted to God’s Will. As a man of character with a fine testimony to that character in the face of temptation, we’ll put our trust in you, and you alone, to tell us what God’s Word really says. (And I can go on and on listing these frauds by name describing their claims…)
We no longer community, but willing slaves to the masters. We are now at that point to believe that credibility now rests in proclaimed allegiance (see 1 Corinthians 1: 12-13.) Now that the Seven Mountain Mandate (a post-millennialist framework) has flown under the radar (piggybacking on the idea of dispensations, pretty music, and a media empire) to infiltrate churches worldwide, the realms of the spiritual and political have merged to bring hopes of a glorious new kingdom. That political power in the service to God, has been placed in Trump’s hands. And now, it seems, new shadows will have to be cast by those wishing to retain power if Trump indeed faces both defeat and prosecution. We won’t hope to begin to see the immense damage until he is gone. (But don’t worry too much, if the history of human nature holds, the shadow casters will still be able to make a good living. And you’ll keep sending them money.)
The law which will soon threaten your chosen one was thankfully adopted before our tragic corruption. The law still applies in the secular world—those troublesome laws which mirror the Laws given by the Law Maker (wielder of the uncontrollable light) hold that no man, no matter how rich, blessed, or holy is above the law. Though you in the Christian Right claim to want to ‘return’ to those pure laws, the reality of your ‘laws’ lies in the both the testimony of your prophets and in Trump—the ‘law’ is merely their Will (over others), the phone call is just more evidence of this. You want mere men (specifically, your men) to be above the law. Admit it.
I understand the perennial problem of unjust laws, but what Trump is doing (making unfounded accusations) is not the fix even if a significant problem existed. The evidence strongly points out that the elections are more secure than they’ve ever been—this the courts (and many, many other people in the know) have concluded. Since Trump is parroting and amplifying nonsense conjured up by a bunch of reckless speculators, what he is doing is just arson. Things could get (much more) violent because all the lies. You approve of this? I’d be willing to bet, a lot, that if the tables were turned and someone you didn’t like, like demoncrat Biden for instance, was pulling all this horribly destructive shit Trump’s pulling now, you’d be screaming bloody murder about truth, evidence, and the law! Don’t bother asserting to me that you’re principled. You like to talk of family values, sex, life but all of this is an illusory cover for something much darker. Hobbes Leviathan has taken a Christian form—swear allegiance to your sovereign for you owe him your allegiance in exchange for your safety. All this fealty to a false superior is done under a banner of good. Those who resist this order are deemed enemies of the state and of good Christian conduct—measures must then be taken. And they may still be.
And so here we are. At war. I side with the seculars in that Trump must be ousted in shame and then prosecuted for his many crimes (including the solicitation of Raffensperger to break the law for Trump’s benefit)—this will make Trump a martyr to many inspiring a big pile of righteous indignation. Despite this it must be done, to break the spell of the shadows cast in hopes that some may listen to that still, small (uncontrollable) voice which whispers to us all wooing us to step out of the cave—to step away from illusions and lies cast by your prophets and self-appointed apostles into a life of servitude. (You are so deceived to honestly believe a coup is your best chance for freedom?) If the opposers of Trump and all he stands for (and who stands with him,) in either weariness or fear, fail to hold Trump to account, we will have given our tacit approval to all that has happened thus making us too guilty of crimes against decency and the truth. We must hold the line against intimidation. It’s going to get ugly, but it must be done.