Weighing Trump

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Those of us horrified by Donald Trump have to be careful that we don't spend so much time and thought on his evil idiocies that he becomes the central figure of our lives and our world-view.  When we do, we become mirror-images of Trump's followers.

But worst of all, that would be to share Trump's hyper-inflated self-image of his own magnificent importance in EVERYTHING.  Sharing Trump's thinking in any regard is disgusting.  Concurring in his self-image would be

So I'll affirm, once and for all, that Donald Trump himself matters in human affairs and world history less than a pinch of owl-dung.  Human affairs and world history are the story of mankind's relationship with God, written by God.  Donald Trump is a transitory bit-player under God's stage-direction.


Contrary his own belief, Donald Trump is not the main character in that story.  Neither is Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama (both of whom I mention only because Trump seems to somehow think they are his rivals for the title of History's Most Important Person Ever: though I doubt Clinton or Obama either one thinks of themself in Trump's terms).

But Trump is not deterred, believing that his personal importance is proved by the fact he holds the highest office in the Greatest Nation in the World.

Trump has to affirm that about America.  It would diminish his personal sense of his own glory if "his" nation was anything less than the Greatest, Strongest, Most Wonderful, Richest, Most Powerful country that ever existed.  But those of us not in Trump's perceptual-thrall don't have to be, and shouldn't be, as delusional.

In the story God writes of human affairs and world history, there's no good reason to consider America anything more than another kingdom of men.  No reason to believe Trumpland is God's ultimate be-all and end-all for humankind.

Trump himself, and the fake-news "America" which he creates for himself, matter less than a pinch of owl-dung. 

But in a regard Trump seems not to recognize, both have significant weight on God's scale of mankind and his history.  On God's scale, Trump and his alternative-reality nation weigh in as a huge spiritual evil: man's self-pride vaunting itself against God.


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Going the Wrong Way

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

When the teaching started going around that Christians should be involved in politics, I rejected it.  It was an obvious ploy by the "Moral Majority" of the late '70s to trump up Christian support for Republicans.  Having become a Christian during the Watergate days, I was deeply skeptical that Christians should take political "sides"...especially with the "side" that gave us the most corrupt and destructive government in our history...to that point.

I was...and am...impressed that Galatians 5:20 lists "factions" (Greek haireseis, literally, "dividings") as a work of the flesh.  It was hard to see how the "Moral Majority" and its (quickly-burgeoning) imitators were not such "factions," involving themselves as they did in the worldly power-mechanics of human governments.  New factions springing up is how politics works: but introducing a "dividing" in the Church wounds the Body of Christ.

I was also skeptical that the goal of worldly political power was one Christians should pursue: it seems a serious mis-reading of Jesus' mandate to seek FIRST the Kingdom of God.

The 1980 election confirmed my suspicions.  The major candidates were a staunch Christian and a self-proclaimed "conservative."  The "Christian Conservative" faction delivered its votes overwhelmingly to the "conservative."  It showed where the heart of that faction truly lay, and still does.

But my view has become a bit more Biblically-nuanced in the last 40 years.

I'm more convinced than ever that "Christian conservatism" is an unscriptural faction (unless I've missed some important admonition by Jesus that His followers be "conservative"); and that human political power has no part in enacting the Kingdom of God.  There is no scriptural mandate I'm aware of that we should seek first (or at all) involvement in the human politics of this world's kingdoms.

But that world is where our life takes place, and politics is part of that world.  If we believe Jesus is "Lord" of all things, He is Lord of all that world, and all its human activities, including politics.  It's not our priority to seek; but in their contacts with and responses to the world's politics, Christians should manifest Jesus' rule even that enemy realm.

And there's the problem.

A tourist in Ireland was driving cross-country, and had become lost on a country road.  Seeing a farmer working on his fence, he pulled to the side of the road, and called,

"Excuse me.  Is this the road to Dublin ?"

The farmer paused to look down the road...and turned to look down it the other direction.  Then he looked at the tourist.

"Aye, 'tis," said the farmer.  "But ye're goin' the wrong way."

American Christians' mandate is to manifest Jesus' Lordship, even in the world's political realm.  But for 40 years American Christians have been going the wrong way.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Tell Me, Please

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Tell me, please...is political perception greater, or spiritual perception ?

 By "greater," you understand I mean more pleasing to God...?

From your spiritual perception, then, Christian...

did Jesus say His very Identity is "The Truth" ?

does God hate any sin more than pride ?

does it please God when we act in wisdom...when we "do the right thing"...or in moral foolishness ?

Is it political perception or a spiritual perception, then, when we say America is currently governed by lies, pride, and foolishness ?

Is it a political or a spiritual characterization of American "evangelicals" that they overwhelmingly choose to follow lies, and pride, and unrighteousness ?

"And My people love it so!
But what will you do at the end of it ?"     --  Jeremiah 5:31

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Freedom and False Freedom

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

There's a tendency in American Christianity to equate what scripture calls "freedom" with the “freedom” vaunted in the Declaration of Independence. That’s probably the essence of 90% of the “4th of July” sermons every year.

It’s a false equivalence.   America's founding doctrine is that freedom is a matter of exercising our “inalienable rights”…or as we call them in current political jargon, "entitlements"...and defending those "rights, by violence if necessary.

Jesus said otherwise.  He said freedom is a matter of knowing TRUTH (John 8:32).

If Jesus is right, the enemy’s greatest lie may be that by demanding, or even warring for, our “rights,” we can “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Brother Appolus, in his blog "A Call to the Remnant," gets Jesus' teaching about freedom and "rights:" and even more, Jesus' example: exactly right: “Would you be free today ? Lay down your rights.”

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Who Is Mike Pence

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

When Mike Pence was announced as Donald Trump's running-mate last year, we were all hearing that he was chosen because he was a stalwart "evangelical" who would appeal to that Republican "base."

It seemed to work for some supposed "values voters" I knew, who were torn about voting for Trump.  I don't think any of us had really heard much about Pence before: but the "buzz" (doubtless produced by the "Christian" political machine) was good, and I heard people bring up Pence' name as the reason they thought voting for Trump was a "godly" choice.

Seeing how his relationship with Trump played out, I didn't buy it then, and don't buy it now.  Pence has defended Trump, and "interpreted" his lies to make them seem palatable: he's had no discernible influence in changing Trump's character.  Bottom line, Pence has seemed merely another shameless sycophant of the kind Trump likes around himself.

But my biggest problem with Pence was that he used his "Christian" reputation (even if it was mostly political hype) to whitewash Trump's character.  One time my daughter and I were talking about the role Pence had played in some Trump outrage, and found we had come to think of him in exactly the same words: "Christian whore."

My friend Tim in Australia and I were discussing some months ago where Trump might fit in God's end-time workings.  Neither of us considered that Trump could himself be anti-Christ.  Scripture portrays that man as a uniter, likable, a professing "believer," and widely popular: a master-deceiver, able to hide his evil spirit from his followers.  That's obviously not Trump.

But we didn't really go on to consider that any constitutional process replacing Trump (following his death or impeachment) would give us President Pence.

I blogged several months ago that post-Trump politicians (of all factions) will undoubtedly try to bring forward "...a 'leader' perceived as more honest, intelligent, and likeable than Trump," to whom people will gladly give their allegiance.  ("Who's Next ?", 6/16/17).  Again, thinking of him entirely as a creature of Trump, Pence didn't even cross my mind.

But a profile of Pence in the New Yorker this week makes me think I'd better consider Pence actually could be "who's next."   Rather than a creature of Trump, Pence has long-time personal ambitions, telling high-school friends that he was going to be President.  Nobody but Pence can know how sincere was his conversion to evangelical Protestantism; but he's certainly made it part of his political persona.  He has also cultivated a mutual relationship with the Koch brothers, espousing their causes and accepting their contributions.  Over it all, he projects a voter-friendly image of "Midwestern nice."

I highly recommend the New Yorker piece for its insight into Mike Pence' character and intentions.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/the-danger-of-president-pence


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The Greater Fool Theory

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

This week we celebrated (if that's the right word) the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stock-market crash.

I heard an N.P.R. interview a couple days ago with a woman who's written the story of that event.  She mentioned, which I'd never realized, that the little-remembered 1987 market collapse was worse than either the 1929 or the 2008 crashes.

She placed the blame on the computer trading-strategies of the time: that when any stock started to go down, the computers were automated to sell...driving the stock-price further into decline.

She didn't say; and I'll have to leave to people who understand better than I do the workings of the economic system...which is most people; what part seven years of Reaganomics played in the crash.

I remember listening to "Morning Edition" that day as I was sorting mail at the Post Office.  Bob Edwards, the show's host at the time, asked a financial expert why the crash had involved even "blue chips:" the stocks of companies considered rock-solid in any crisis.

I have never forgotten the expert's answer.  (It is in fact the cornerstore of the sparse understanding I have of how Wall Street works.)

You have to remember, he said, that the stock-market operates by the Greater Fool Theory.  My remembrance is that Bob Edwards chuckled as he said, "The Greater Fool Theory ?  What's that ?"

Investors don't buy stocks because they believe in the issuing company, said the expert, or because they believe in the company's product.  An investor purchases a stock because he believes that, in the future, a greater fool will pay a higher price for it.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Jesus Says How It Is

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I know I'm increasingly one-note in my thinking.  I'm O.K. with that, because my understanding is that it's the right note.

When Jesus said "I AM...the Truth..." He characterized Himself as reality, Personal, whole and entire.  The personal implication for me, for every human being, is that living in reality is the only way of life that "works."  That may be why His full statement was, "I AM the Way, the Truth, and The Life."

When Jesus said satan is "the father of lies" He said the enemy of life is futile and destructive unreality.  And that satan himself is the personal, whole and entire source ("father") of unreality...beginning with his telling Eve she would "surely NOT die" by disobeying God, after God had warned her she would.

We know who Eve chose to believe.  And we know, from her and our experience, who told her the truth.

I choose to believe Jesus.  That means my whole and entire way of life is about loving truth.

That includes politics.  When Jesus said "I AM...The Truth..."  He said politics is not really about politics.  He said politics is a spiritual matter, in which we make a spiritual choice.  Our choice determines our life...or death.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Where Is God When Disaster Strikes ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

In the last few months the U.S. has suffered repeated and unprecedented catastrophes.

We've had such a series of devastating hurricanes back-to-back the past couple months that they've blurred together in our memory.  We remember the name of Katrina, standing out for the unbelievable damage it did to New Orleans' buildings and social structure in 2005.  But even these few weeks later, who can remember which of this year's hurricans was which ?

Which one made half of Floridians flee the state, with the governor warning people that if they stayed, "you will die" ?

Which one flooded Houston like no American city has ever been flooded before ?

Which one caused devastation and social dislocation that Puerto Rico is still digging out of ?

Even before we could sort all that out, Las Vegas seized the headlines from Puerto Rico with the largest mass-shooting in American history.

Then last week and this week California suffered the most destructive wildfire in its history.

Any single "largest" or "worst" catastrophe used to be taken as a sign of God's displeasure, and make people look for a spiritual explanation.  And perhaps that's not a "primitive" or unsophisticated response to disaster.

After all, the truest answer to "Where is God ?" is always that He reigns.  It makes complete sense then to ask, of circumstances among men, how it serves His purpose for the world.

Jesus warned against the smug cause-effect theology that sees sin as the reason for every misfortune (John 9:1-3).  But He in no way disavowed the theology that God punishes sin, mercifully warning us against continuing to choose evil: and that His warnings sometimes come in the form of heightening disaster.

These are unprecedented times in America; and not just in the catastrophes enumerated above.  Another is that we have an unprecedented human ruler...one who prides himself on doing what no president before him has ever done.  One who daily says incredible things...things literally "incredible," because they're not true.  One who makes catastrophic policy-decisions, breaks his word, insults, bullies, and lies...to "make America great again."

America's "faith-leaders" told us he was "God's man."  Americans chose him...American Christians most strongly of all groups...and, even having seen his true character, many continue to choose him.

Maybe America...especially American Christians...should ask if we have offended God.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Family: Psalms 68:6

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I went to a wedding last Saturday.  Shane and Melody were my daughter's friends through her former boyfriend, Joe; a drug-dealer currently in federal prison, who's the father of my 6-year old grandson.  I knew them all through my daughter's association with them...which horrified me no end.

Like all my daughter's friends and acquaintances, Joe, Melody, and Shane were druggies.  Low-lifes.  Several rungs lower on the social ladder, to my notion, than trailer-court trash.  Not the kind of people I'd choose to hang out with.

But I did, because my daughter was one of them, and part of the drug-life.  I hated that life: and frankly, hated her associates who (as I saw it) encouraged my beloved daughter to belong to their drug-life world (...even while I knew she chose it).

I prayed for my daughter for many years, that she'd see and choose Life (Who Jesus said He IS).  Through a drug-arrest, God answered my prayers of desperation.  And through a drug-arrest and conviction, He also brought Joe to Himself.  Maybe Joe's mom loves him the same way I love my daughter, and was praying for him.

Maybe Shane and Melody's family and friends were also praying for them...or maybe God was just being His incomprehensively-merciful Self.  He also brought them to love Him, and love His word.  It's crazy...Who does that kind of thing ?!?!  Nobody...else.

Joe, Shane, Melody...enemies of God (maybe my daughter's name should be on that list...and mine ?).  God made them His Own children, brothers and sisters of Jesus (Romans 5:10).  The family-resemblance is unmistakeable, in so many things I've seen them do, and heard from them.  God has truly made them teachers and models to me in more ways than I can count.

And He's made them greatly more even than that.

I went to Shane and Melody's wedding Saturday.  It was a family celebration.  Our Father was there, blessing them, and blessing each one of us there, by the joy of His Presence.

You can't pick your family...either when you're born, or when you're born again: God picks.  I'd have never picked any low-life druggies as my family.  But God did.  He's wiser than me: and He's made me fall in love with them, in His family with them.

"God sets the lonely in families..." (Psalms 68:6, NIV)

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Joseph Smith the Deceiver

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Everything I've read by Fawn Brodie has impressed me.  She was a rigorously honest historian, and a graceful stylist.

On a cruise this week, I've had a chance to re-read her first book, No Man Knows My History, the first biography of the "prophet" Joseph Smith which was neither Mormon hagiography nor biased anti-Mormon invective.  Brodie, a non-practicing Mormon herself, searched the historical documents of the LDS and RLDS archives, and affidavits collected by the earliest crusaders against Mormonism, subjecting both to the same strict examination.

The picture of Joseph Smith which emerges is not at all flattering.  Brodie gives Smith credit for his charismatic personality and his imagination, his attractive playfulness and his forceful oratory.  But she doesn't soft-play his earlier career as an unsuccessful treasure-hunter, his continued failed attempts to enrich himself (often at the expense of his followers), and his child-like craving for attention and grandeur.

Brodie came to the conclusion that Smith's theology, and his "Golden Bible," were products of his personality, and not revelations from God.  She was subsequently excommunicated by the "Saints," and her work attacked by Mormon historians.

In the over-70 years since publication, Brodie revised the biography once, and some of her conclusions (for example, the identity of Joseph Smith's children by various "plural marriages") have been challenged, sometimes successfully, by new evidence.  But she rigorously documented Smith's immature egotism, and how it manifested in the  "Book of Mormon" and his theology.

Smith at various time showed disdain for his own "Golden Bible."  When the cornerstone of the temple in Nauvoo was being laid, he placed in it the remaining original copy of the Book of Mormon, saying "I have had trouble enough with this thing," shocking one of his priestly witnesses (p.276).  One of his former high officials (albeit a particularly slippery one) who left the church later claimed that Smith proposed to him a plan to have plates engraved that he could exhibit for a fee as the original plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated (p. 316-7).

Brodie documents well the most fascinating fact of her subject, Smith's transformation from petty frontier con-man to prophet of God's new faith.  He  himself seemed at first to be amazed to find his revelations believed (much like Donald Trump's amazement that he could "...stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters").  He called his followers to their faces "...the greatest dupes, as a body of people, who ever lived..." (pp. 295-6).  To another visitor who remarked on the absolute power he held in Nauvoo, he agreed no man could be entrusted with unlimited power; but added in "a rich, comical aside" (said the visitor) "Remember, I am a prophet !" (ibid)

The tragedy for Joseph Smith, and his followers, was that he eventually came to believe his own deceptions, to the point that Brodie characterizes him as "...fully intoxicated with power and drunk with visions of empire and apocalyptic glory" (p. 354).  When he set out the "articles of faith" of Mormonism, one was that "the Book of Mormon  [is]  the word of God."  And he came to fully believe that he was himself God's sovereign ruling authority on earth, whose word supplanted all previous religious doctrines.  Another "article of faith," for example, was that "...men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression" (pp. 277-8).

Smith led his followers in self-deception (or let's say "hypocrisy").  After he'd been teaching "plural marriage" to his inner circle for some years, word leaked out.  Smith not only denied to the world that he and the "Saints" were practicing polygamy, he solicited affidavits from his people testifying there was no polygamy.  And he got them: not only from his high officials who already had "plural wives," but even from the parents of a 17-year old girl who were witnesses to their daughter's marriage to Smith only months before (pp. 320-1).

But the famous "revelation" that God commands the practice of polygamy was far from the most heretical of Smith's teachings.  (That revelation was nullified as God's abiding word for Mormons when a later "Prophet" heard God reject polygamy...conveniently, when polygamy was the issue blocking Utah from being admitted as a state of the United States.)  His greatest heresies were yet to come.

In the King Follett funeral sermon he declared that "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man...:" the "Adam-God" theology that Mormon leader Lorenzo Snow summarized, "As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be;” which Mormonism still teaches (p. 366).  In an argument with one of his authorities who opposed the church' "debauchery," he exclaimed "...we can all go to hell together and convert it into a heaven by casting the Devil out !  Hell is by no means the place the world of fools suppose it to be, but on the contrary, it is quite an agreeable place" (p. 370).

But more than re-defining God Himself, and hell, Smith's theology was most about glorifying himself.  In one of his last sermons, he proclaimed, "I have more to boast of than any man ever had.  I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam...I boast that no man ever did such a work as I..." (p. 374).  He clearly considered Jesus a lesser spiritual leader than himself; and his ambitions for secular glory also led him to proclaim himself General of his own Mormon army, and a candidate for President of the United States.

I admire Fawn Brodie;s life-long practice of honest history.  And nowhere does her integrity better serve truth than in documenting the spirit of anti-Christ at work in Joseph Smith and his "church" since its founding.