Evil

A far too long letter

I shared this below on Facebook late last Monday night after the President threatened to use the military to commit violence against American citizens right before clearing peaceful protestors so he could stage a photo op at a church he didn’t attend while holding a Bible that someone brought him:

This is evil. 

I’m a theologian, so I talk like that. But it is, and here’s the thing: I’m pretty good at explaining things, but I’m stuck right now. If you don’t get that making an insane speech in which you threaten martial law unconstitutionally while you order federal police to use tear gas and violently clear peaceful protestors so you can storm a church without invitation and hoist the Word of God awkwardly as a prop for a photo-op while you continue to refuse to offer any words of solace for the murdered Black man at the center of these protests is evil, I can’t help you.

I’ve said for years that there is no bottom with this man, and I’m proved right daily. Character matters. The ancient Greeks said character is destiny. This man’s character is ruinous, and so is everything he touches. So many people thought they could sow the wind by electing him and force those they hated to reap the whirlwind, but putting a man of no character in power because hating your enemies is more profitable than loving your neighbors is a blood oath to a dark god, not a governing strategy.

This is blasphemy. This is idolatry. This is profanity. This is golden calf level madness, folks.

What should we make of a leader who looked at our country today and thought, “I should double-down on violence and mock Christ,” rather than lead and effect reconciliation?

Black lives matter. Pray for peace. Love your neighbor.

This is evil.

And then on Friday President Trump rushed to a press conference because the jobs numbers were better than expected and in the course of bragging about the economy, pretending everything was okay, and tough-talking about abusing protesters he said that George Floyd was “looking down right now and saying there’s a great thing happening for our country. It’s a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody.” So I wrote another post about that:

On Monday I declaimed Trump's evil as he threatened the American people with violence, gassed and forcibly removed peaceful protesters ahead of the stated curfew, and staged a photo op in which he held a Bible he does not read in front of a church he does not attend so that the credulous and inattentive would see him as virtuous and strong when in reality he is amoral, craven, venal, and incompetent.

I don't know what to say anymore, friends. As I've said, I'm a theologian. That's how I see the world and approach it. Since Donald Trump entered politics by pushing the racist lie of birtherism I've believed that he was unqualified to hold high office. Nothing he has done since has changed my mind. There have been low points along the way. I thought surely my fellow Christians would withdraw their support when he advocated for war crimes during a debate. I thought they would when the Access Hollywood tape came out. When he slandered war heroes. When he bickered with Gold Star families. When he instituted a policy of forced family separation at the border. When he called African countries shitholes. When he lied about veterans' health care. Nearly every day of his presidency has been a new reason that people who believe we are all created in the image of God and are commanded to love our neighbors should withdraw support from him. And yet he has largely held the support of Christians in America. 

"Abortion!" they say, as if his support for the pro-life movement isn't all performative and expedient and undermined by the way he has lived his life in such a way that causes abortions and advocates for violence at every opportunity. How anyone could watch him separate families and cage children and still call him "pro-life" is one of the most shocking hypocrisies in the history of the Church.

"Socialism!" they say, as if you can't be a socialist and a Christian, and as if they actually understand what socialism is and realize that it's not an option on the table.

"Judges!" they say, as if one of the Supreme Court seats wasn't gotten by deceptive and immoral means, and as if any Republican wouldn't have done the same as Trump with judges.

"He's a fighter!" they say, as if that is a virtue Christians should seek when we worship the risen Christ who commanded us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, go two miles, and forgive endlessly.

"Drain the swamp!" they say as if he isn't at the head of the most corrupt administration in the history of our country, with more cabinet members, associates, and campaign officials in jail, under indictment, under investigation, or resigned in disgrace than any other. As if he doesn't sit on an empire built by ill-gotten gain. As if he has ever played by the rules in his life.

And it's probably just me, but one incident sticks out to me as a clarion call to throw sand on the gears of his administration and get him as far away from the levers of power as possible. It was when he made his remarks following the white nationalist rally turned riot and murder in Charlottesville. I can remember every detail of listening to him. The nation was in pain caused by supporters of his who were boldly calling for racist violence. And before he said his infamous, "Good people on both sides" line to avoid alienating the racists in his base he did something else: he bragged about the economy. I never understood more clearly that he had only one lens for evaluating good and evil: profit. In his mind, everything else was negligible because the stock market was good. I was revolted. I yelled at the radio.

And this week he didn't have the economy to try to justify his evil, hence the stunt with the Bible. And a former cabinet member, a 4-star general, denounced him. His former Chief of Staff agreed. And then came a good jobs report. As it turns out, the congressional efforts to support small business seem to have worked better than hoped. Some people who had lost their jobs were rehired so small business loans could be forgiven. But it's not "good news," and certainly not all around. Unemployment is still sky-high. Over 100k people are dead, many as a direct result of the slow and incompetent federal response. Black unemployment grew. And the country is aflame with racial tension and protests following the police murder of yet another unarmed Black man. George Floyd. His funeral was yesterday.

So today Trump rushed to the microphones to try to take credit for the good jobs report and bolster his reelection chances. We should have expected the American president to mention George Floyd. We would expect him to be serious, even mournful. We would expect him to comfort a grieving nation. And instead he said:

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying there’s a great thing happening for our country. It’s a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody.”

George Floyd is dead. This is not a great day for everybody. And this President will not stop doing evil. Shame. Shame. Shame.

I was told that for most folks he was "the lesser of two evils." Maybe we disagree about who represented the "lesser," but I'm fine with the formula. The problem is that we don't support evil and call it good just because we perceive it to be "lesser." We oppose evil wherever we find it.

"Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter." -Isaiah 5:20

Shame on President Trump. He should immediately resign his office. I pray for his repentance and separation from power, which is clearly poisonous to us all. There is no way to love our neighbors and also support him in his evildoing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-05/trump-invokes-floyd-on-job-data-even-as-black-unemployment-soars-kb2d6c00

And I want to talk a bit about my use of the word “evil” and insisting on the moral dimensions of the crisis that is the Trump presidency. When I teach on the subject I frequently say that evil is an absence and a presence.

The absence is easy to understand if we think about a couple of scientific concepts: If you cast your mind back to high school science class you may remember that there’s actually no such thing as “cold.” It doesn’t exist. Cold is an absence of heat. Similarly there’s no such thing as “darkness,” there’s only an absence of light. In that way, evil is an absence of good. When good is not present, you have the condition of evil.

But that’s not our whole experience of evil. Cold and darkness, while they may not technically exist, still have a presence that we perceive, perhaps extra-sensorily. And evil does too. If you light a match in a dark cave, you may not technically have darkness, but the light is so fragile that it feels like the darkness is able to overwhelm it. That same match in a snowstorm may technically be a source of heat, but it isn’t likely to provide comfort to our bodies. And evil has a presence to it also that threatens the good and can swallow up singular instances of it.

So I don’t use the word “evil” unadvisedly or indiscriminately with regard to the Trump administration. Neither do I shy away from using it. It’s a category used throughout the Bible to describe actions that are opposed to God, neighbor, and the law/teachings.

Something broke in me two years ago. I was crushed by the Trump administration’s policy of forced family separation. Let’s be very clear about this issue: it was not a continuation of any policy begun under George W. Bush or Barack Obama. It was designed to be intentionally cruel to act as a deterrent to refugees and migrants seeking to enter the country. It victimized children and parental love to accomplish its goals. It is evil in every sense, and I believe it is among most cruel things our nation has ever done. It is an absence of good because we failed to love when we had the opportunity to care for refugees and migrants in need, and it is a palpable presence because it added malice to pain. It is evil.

Something broke in me watching the cruelty of this policy unfold. First, that the Trump administration was even able to conceive of something so evil. Then, that they lied about it at every opportunity. But worst of all was watching Christians defend it. Something broke in me. I had written fairly regularly up to that point, and during it, but I lost my voice in the wake of it.

Part of the difficulty of being a Christian during the Trump era has been seeing so many of the people who raised me turn on their beliefs or be revealed as liars. I was raised by Christians who told me that character mattered. I was told that there was no such thing as a “private life,” but that corruption in one area of life invariably spilled into all the others. I was told that moral leadership was important in elected officials. I was told that doing the right thing was more important than doing the popular thing. I was told that we were supposed to love our neighbors, to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us. I was told that the ends didn’t justify the means. And I believed it. I still do.

And my pain has been centered on seeing those who taught me all of that reveal that in order to support Donald Trump they either renounced those beliefs or they never really believed them in the first place. It’s an either/or. My heart was wounded during the election, it bled during his early administration, and it broke when Christians were confronted with an administration ripping children from their parents and keeping them in cages and saying, “Yeah, but…”

The people who told me that two wrongs don’t make a right said with a straight face that this didn’t matter because “Obama did it too.” And first of all, some families being separated for various reasons is different than all families being separated automatically. But more importantly, for people to have hated everything Barack Obama did except the part where children got put in cages is horrifyingly telling.

What do we say to people who tolerate caging children who were ripped from their families? For any reason? How do we deal openly with people who so happily tolerate lies? Can we really be in fellowship with people who hate others enough to support this man? What choice do we have?

This is a crisis in American Christianity. I get scolded frequently for being “divisive” and for not trying to win Trump supporters with honey rather than vinegar. I get shamed for shaming the shameless. I got called an “evil theologian” on Facebook. (Honestly, I’m thinking about adding that one to my bio.) I get told that politics isn’t a reason for dividing the body of Christ. I get excoriated for not making opposing Trump a softer place to land for those who had supported him.

I reject those calls.

I didn’t create the division; those who supported “grab them by the pussy” did. Those who supported “I like people who weren't captured” did. Those who supported “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” did. Those who supported “very fine people on both sides” did. Those who supported “don’t be too nice” did. Those who supported “I believe Putin” did. Those who supported “You've done, really, a spectacular job” did. Those who supported “get that son of a bitch off the field” did.

It’s not divisive to say that gassing and abusing protesters is evil - gassing and abusing protesters is divisive. It’s not scolding or shaming to say that ripping children from their families is evil - ripping children from their families is evil. I didn’t smash all the things on the way to Trump, his supporters did. It’s not my fault that coming back over the divide means crossing a chasm littered with the sharp and injurious detritus of all the norms, rules, morals, institutions, and bodies they shattered following him.

I’m not saying that we don’t have a responsibility to welcome with those who reject Trump’s evil when they finally abandon him. I hope we welcome them all with open arms. But I am absolutely saying that we cannot minimize the damage to our commonwealth that supporting Trump has done. And we have to change our behavior with elected leaders. It didn’t have to be this way. We can elect someone we don’t agree with, but then it is incumbent upon us to hold those leaders accountable, not to suppress our consciences as we incorporate our support into our identity rather than admit we were used or duped or just plain wrong.

I remember my old pastor Tim Keller talking about forgiveness. I’m over-summarizing, but he said that forgiveness always hurts, it’s just a matter of who it hurts. When God forgives us, God, the aggrieved party, takes the pain of the transgression on Himself. It costs deeply to forgive. When we ask forgiveness of each other, we either find a way to make restitution as a way of taking the pain of the rift on ourselves, or we ask the other party to forgive without restitution, which requires them to accept the hurt as the price of forgiveness. A price is always paid.

I don’t fully know where that leaves us as we confront the evil Trump does. But I know that at some level those who raised me know what they’ve abandoned to support this man. This isn’t politics as usual. This isn’t a division between right and left. This is about right and wrong. Reconciliation is going to hurt us all, and it starts with acknowledging the wrong that was done.

Something broke in me when we refused to protect children. Something woke up in me when Trump cynically waved a Bible after abusing protesters. I remain more convinced than ever that we need to confront this as a matter of refusing to abide the triumph of evil. That doesn’t make me a Democrat; I’ve got no interest in that. It means I must remain committed to Micah 6:8 no matter who is president:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;    

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God?”

I must remain committed to Matthew 22:37-40 no matter who is president:

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I must remain committed to Isaiah 5:20 no matter who is president:

"Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter."

I must remain committed to John 13:34-35 no matter who is president:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Do our politics love our neighbors or love ourselves? Do our politics love our enemies or hate our enemies?