First of all, I am not even an American citizen. I will not vote this November 3rd. In fact, I am not even in the United States. I don't belong to the Democratic Party and I don't know Joe Biden personally. He certainly doesn't know me. In short, I have no stake in the outcome of this elections. I am just one political observer taking advantage of technology that makes it possible now to participate in a global dialogue on everything from global warming to the hundred ways you can recycle a soda can.
Secondly, US politics are not an exclusively American domestic subject. US foreign policy impacts the rest of the world, including the region where I live. The direction of policy is determined by who's in the Whitehouse. Policy is the result of building consensus among opposing interests looking to that policy for advantage or exception. On a practical level, policy depends in large part on who sits behind the huge desk in the Oval Office. And that, in turn, is the collective result of the American electoral behavior. So it cannot be avoided that in myriad ways fair and foul, the rest of the global community will look to influence the behavior of the American electorate by helping shape the landscape of universal opinion that they know the American voter is sensitive to. On second thought, I along with the rest of the world, am just as invested in the US presidency and in contributing to the vetting factors that lead to that choice.
Thirdly, it's my failing to have created only the impression that I was leaning towards Joe Biden. I should have just come clean and said it plain and simple that I am for Joe Biden for reasons that are not entirely American.
I am also an evangelical Christian--a born-again believer in Jesus Christ. Like all doctrinaire believers, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for the bible declares it is the power of God unto salvation for all men. I don't claim any prophetic anointing or oracle powers of any kind. I only believe in the relevance of the scriptures and in the duty of every Christian to speak out on matters that touch on biblical principles to declare the glory of God in the secular arena of post-modern politics--even at the risk of being wrong.
I disagree with the position of some Christian ministries in the US--mostly those in the so-called "bible belt" of the American midwest and deep south--who vigorously support Donald Trump as the "Anointed One" of God. To be fair, it is not the Christian church that made such declaration. It was Trump himself but without any significant objection from the church. It is also not the first superlative claim that he has made for himself. He unabashedly calls himself the greatest US president ever, the one who has done the most for the African-American community with the only "possible exception" of Abraham Lincoln. He seriously believes he deserves to the the fifth head on the granite cliffsides of Mount Rushmore. He brags about building--or at least aspiring to build--a border wall that is longer than the Tower of Babel is tall.
He is a man full of flaws, errors and contradictions--and that is putting it kindly. But the enthusiastic Christian supporter of Donald Trump is quick to point out that Christianity is not about being good. It is about acknowledging that no one is good and that the fallen nature of man renders him predisposed to doing evil. Man cannot, by his own puny efforts, divorce himself from his reprobate nature. It requires the gracious intervention of a compassionate and forgiving God to cleanse unholy man. Then with the sanctifying work of His Holy Spirit, God can repurpose the life of a redeemed sinner to become, among other possibilities, a vessel of godly agenda for civil government. Therefore, when a man like Donald Trump is "raised by God" the people of God must be quick to recognize and set aside the seeming incongruence between the anointing and the man's character. Not only can God utilize even an evil man, in fact evil men are all the material God has to work with in this fallen world. So the church must demonstrate its faith in God by accepting His will--even if it comes in the unpalatable form of Donald Trump. Failing to do that is flying in the face of God's sovereignty and a rebellious declination to submit to His all-encompassing lordship.
All that explanation is needed just to clarify the statement that "Christianity if not about being good."
But if you state the opposite--"Christianity is about being evil"--the self-contradiction is all at once self-evident that any explanation is totally unnecessary. The statement simply won't fly. You should not try to justify it, because you can't. This time it flies in the face of the nature of God Himself.
For centuries theologians have debated the answer to the question, "Can God create a rock so large that He cannot lift it?" If the premise is that nothing is impossible with God, then you must grant that He can indeed create a rock of any size. But based on the same premise, you have to grant that He can lift it--which means He didn't do a good job creating the rock in the first place. His nature in the second act contradicts His nature in the first act.
In truth, that question cannot be answered because it cannot even be asked. It's not a question of impossibility but of validity of premise. It is not true that nothing is impossible to God. Yes, there are any number of things God cannot do. God cannot do anything that would deny His nature. God cannot lie, God cannot die, God cannot reproduce Himself, God cannot cease being God. This is why God, being the sum total of all universal good, can never be evil. God cannot stand for both good and evil. He cannot stand for evil, period.
But it has been lovingly pointed out to me by brothers and sisters in the faith that Donald Trump may be all rough and tumble outside, but is godly soft and chewy inside. Never mind that he held a bible upside down for a photo-op, relegating the object representation of God's Word to the status of a talisman, an amulet of superstition. He couldn't quote a verse of scripture if his life depended on it. The Word of God is not on his lips because it is not in his heart. But then, again, the argument comes forth that God will often use the "humble things of this world to shame the wise." Jesus said whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers, that you do unto him. In other words, don't jump to conclusions when you see the outward appearance of an unworthy person. If you reject someone because you think he is unworthy you could be rejecting the embodiment of Christ without even knowing it. For all you know, the unworthy-appearing person is actually God-sent. God just packaged him that way--later God will guide His people through revelation to recognize the servant he sends forth among them.
You see, again, all that explanation is needed just to explain the idea that God might use an unlikely candidate as His vessel.
The God I serve didn't give me the power to judge another man, that he may either enter heaven or be cast into hell. God gave me--and all Christians--wisdom not to be used to judge the eternal destiny of men. That wisdom is to be used to help me navigate the labyrinths of temporal life--because, in the meantime, that is the life He has given me to function with in this fallen world.
If God chooses to raise a leader of men, He will not--in denial of His nature--use any kind of deceptive or misleading packaging. The revelation that Christian orthodoxy talks about as the mechanics by which God influences human decision making is revelation that is reserved for the purpose of understanding God himself. To direct the temporal affairs of God's people in the Old Testament, God was not vague. He was not mysterious, he was not suggestive. He was blatant.
He did not give three million Israelites wandering the vastness of the Sinai desert navigational revelation. He simply told them follow the pillar of fire by night, and the pillar of smoke by day.
I've listened to Donald Trump all throughout the campaign, I have never heard him say one biblical thing. Saying "Jesus is popular in America" is not a spiritual achievement. It is just dumbing down the obvious. What I have heard from him plenty is how he promises to make America wealthy again--and he leaves no room for misinterpretation that by "wealthy" he means material fortunes, in the framework of jobs, tax rebates, trade advantage, the stock market, arms sales, snatching the commercial success of TikTok and other tell-tale signs of material prosperity.
It is no wonder many of the ministries that support Donald Trump are some of the same controversial churches--of contentious stature within the Body of Christ itself--that espouse the so-called Prosperity Gospel. This is the unvarnished preaching of the idea that God meant for Christians to never experience poverty, and doing so to regard it as a sign of disfavor from which deliverance must be sought.
Many Christians have pointed out to me that Donald Trump has appointed conservative justices to the US Supreme Court. Enough of them already, in fact, that the reversal of Roe vs. Wade is a foregone conclusion. Soon enough, but not too long from now, abortion would be illegal again across all fifty states.
Abortion is murder. From the very first time the crime was committed by Cain, God had always disapproved of it, God never lifted the mark of Cain from the collective brow of the entire human race. The reversal of Roe vs. Wade will not set things right for the unborn child in the womb of its mother on her way to an abortion clinic. That child died in the heart of its mother from the time she became aware of her pregnancy. The abortion clinic is only where she goes to bury the fetus. If the Christian church will look to policing hospitals and clinics to stop the unbridled killing of innocent unborns, the battle is already lost. If it puts its trust on legislation and criminal penalties to coerce society into respecting the sanctity of human life, it abdicates its whole duty to respond to God's call for His law to be written on tablets of human hearts--and not in volumes of congressional bills.
If the church cannot imbue the pro-life value of God's kingdom in the hearts of men and women, even nine pro-life justices in the US Supreme Court--the entire bench--cannot stop abortion. It is not a legal issue. It is an issue of the heart. The agencies of government cannot compensate for the failure of family and religious institutions in propagating the Christian value and ethical systems.
On the other hand, I hear only Joe Biden trying his best to refocus America to the womb of its inception--the godly founding of America as the world's beacon of faith, hope and restoration. He cries that this election is about a battle for the soul of the nation.
The Christian evangelical church rejects that call by rejecting the man through whom God channels the blatant message. They prefer the biblical contortionism needed to rationalize their support for Donald Trump--who is blatant about his total lack of understanding of the will of God.
Between Donald Trump who panders to the church by giving in to all their political and material demands, and Joe Biden who appeals to godly conscience and calls on America to rededicate itself to the original ideals of the Christian Founding Fathers, the evangelical church in America threw their support behind the man-pleasing Trump. The human leaders of the church are simply wrong on this one, there is simply no more polite way to say it.
I considered delaying writing this piece--what if Donald Trump wins? But if I delayed this, if I refused to go out on a limb and call out the error of the evangelical church in America, then I'm just waiting for the last touchdown in Sunday's football game so I could describe it accurately on Monday morning.
I believe that if Donald Trump loses, the people of God who did not bear witness to him being anointed will be vindicated. But if he wins, it will not change the fact that Donald Trump still does not mirror much of God's righteous standard. And this is the crux of the matter: God expects His people to submit to the civil government he will head anyway. This is the counter-intuitive wisdom that evangelical America pre-empted. It's not that God will test if people will support a man He did not anoint. It is more likely that God wants to see who would continue to submit to the civil government institution that He anointed, even if its reigns were usurped by the most generic sinner. The obedience is not demonstrated before the elections--or even in intervention of it--when its possible result is in the hands of man. It comes after the elections when results can no longer be changed--and the destiny of the nation is in the hands of God--Donald Trump or no Donald Trump.Ⓒ 2020 Joel R. Dizon
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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