EXTRA !! EXTRA !! DONALD TRUMP JOINS ISIS !!!!

N.P.R. yesterday interviewed Canadian Graeme Wood, author of The Way of the Stranger.  The book is an expansion of Wood's 2015 cover-story for Atlantic magazine, "What ISIS Really Wants."
__________________________________________________________________________

[N.P.R.]: How do they justify the violence?

WOOD: You'll find some who will say the violence is temporary. We are Muslims who are reviving the faith and we have to do this in a fallen world, so we'll cut off the hands of thieves right now. But once the Islamic State is stronger and people realize this is the punishment, we won't have to cut off hands.

[N.P.R.]: The violence is a way to peace?

WOOD: Yes. That's what you find with the nicer ones.

__________________________________________________________________________

Note that the "nicer" adherents of ISIS operate by the lie called out in Romans 3:8, that doing evil will bring about good.


Note that Donald Trump joins ISIS in that operative lie, promising that his unrighteous policies will "Make America Great Again."

Syria

Can anyone see or hear about the sufferings of Syrians caught in their nation's civil war without being moved to tears and prayers for them ?.

Can anyone who claims to have the heart and mind of Jesus not be moved to pray for peace and mercy for these sufferers ?

But politicians tend to see all things in political terms: the wrong priority when it overrides acting in mercy.  Bill Clinton's greatest moral failing was not his hidden adulterous immorality: it was his failure to use America's power to protect Rwandans from genocide as the whole world watched, day after day.

Politicians' delusional self-interest is not news.  And it would be no more than dust on the scales, weighed against the sufferings of Syrians: except that how politicians view that tragedy will determine how they act toward it.

And that, of course, many in the politically-enslaved American Church will quickly adopt the view of their politician-de-jour, and baptize his actions as "Christian."

(The unrighteous "Christian" faction that rules my state is ahead of that curve.  They have been posturing their rebelliousness for a year, trumpeting that our state will not accept any of the Syrians to whom President Obama gave refuge in his America-hating "tyranny."

God bless my state's former Methodist Bishop Scott Jones, who publicly called on congregations to act in Jesus' mercy, and help Syrian refugees relocate here.  I admire his courage for standing against the politicians: and even more his courage for standing against the members of those congregations, the majority of whom undoubtedly take the politicians' view more than Jesus' view.)

I have little hope America will act for peace or mercy in Syria.  The little our incoming-president has said about Syrians' suffering is that the military forces of Russia, Iran, and Syria's President Assad are "killing ISIS."

We all know Donald Trump lies.  And one consequence for those who choose to follow lies is that they themselves come to believe lies.  First their own (for all deception begins in self-deception), then those of greater liars than themselves: and in both, ultimately the "father of lies" himself (John 8:44).

We all know Donald Trump believes lies.  What crushes any hope that America will act mercifully toward suffering Syrians is that Trump shows he believes the lies of deceivers more deceitful than himself.

Trump, and America, will undoubtedly act on Russian lies, Iranian lies, and Assad's lies.  That the people suffering so horribly in Syria's war are evil people, ISIS people...who deserve to suffer horribly, and die horribly.