Politics November 2025

 

The Nietzschean President

            In 2016 I quit the Republican party because it accepted Donald Trump as its presidential candidate.  I complained then about various policy proposals made by the candidate, but I think now that the real source of my discomfort was Trump’s lack of beliefs.  “Trumpism” is all about Trump, not any of the policies he announces.

            Marjorie Taylor Greene learned this truth recently.  For more than three years she loudly and consistently endorsed anything that Trump wanted to do.  But she made the mistake of thinking that Trump really meant it when, on the campaign trail, he would reveal all the secrets about Jeffery Epstien.  Trump decided he didn’t want all the dirty details exposed, and he derided MTG as a “traitor” when she joined with Democrats to call for release of Epstein files.  Seeing that the move in Congress to release the files would pass, Trump flipped: vote to release them, he said.  But he would never forgive Greene for her disloyalty.

            Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated in the summer.  Kirk unapologetically combined conservative politics with Christian faith.  At his televised funeral, Kirk’s widow rose to the occasion; she said she forgave Charlie’s killer.  Trump followed Mrs. Kirk to the podium and used the occasion to say he would not forgive his enemies.  Trump believes in pay-back.

            Was Trump aware that he was publicly repudiating a central Christian doctrine?  I don’t think he cares.

            Trump wants peace between Russia and Ukraine.  I do too!  Every Christian should desire and pray for peace.  But from the news I get the suspicion that Trump wants peace mostly because he wants a Nobel prize.  It seems he is willing to endorse Russian dictator Putin’s every demand and push Ukraine to accept them to get “peace.”  The affair sounds much like Mr. Chamberlain’s “peace in our time.”

            Much of Trump’s electoral appeal rested on his demonization of illegal immigrants.  He often emphasizes the crimes committed by immigrants (especially drug trafficking or human trafficking), without ever acknowledging that the vast majority of the people rounded up for deportation have committed no crime in our country except one: crossing into the US without proper authorization.  It is surely true that we need comprehensive immigration reform.  I would agree also that under President Biden (until 2024, anyway) our lax immigration enforcement invited many undocumented immigrants.  Now, in Trump’s second term, fear has settled over immigrant, especially Hispanic, communities.  Workers needed in agriculture and other industries are disappearing.  For economic reasons, some of Trump’s supporters are realizing that mass deportation is a problematic policy.

            What does the Bible have to say about justice for the alien and the foreigner?  Mr. Trump doesn’t care.

            Trump touts “America first” and “Make America Great Again.”  But these are merely slogans.  He doesn’t believe in anything except his own greatness.

            There was a philosopher whose doctrines could be cited as fundamental to Trumpism.  Friedrich Nietzsche called for the “revaluation of all values” and prophesied the emergence of the “over-man.”  Nietzsche thought it obvious that there are no objective moral values, just as there are no objective truths about anything.  One could argue that Trump is a Nietzschean “over-man.”  Unconstrained by any truths or values, the over-man lives to assert his will.

            Is Trump really a Nietzschean?  If so, I suspect he got there on his own; Trump would never actually read philosophy.

A Public Lecture from 2014

 

I would like to thank the Circle of Peace for inviting me to speak this evening.  I count it a high honor.

 

On the Politicization of Christianity

 

            In the autumn of 312, the Roman general Constantine defeated a rival general, Maxentius, at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, thus making himself emperor of Rome.  After the battle, Constantine claimed that he had won the battle under the express direction of Jesus Christ, who had appeared to Constantine in a vision. 

            Various historians have doubted Constantine’s story of his miraculous vision of Christ, telling him to “conquer by this,” either the sign of the cross or a Chi-Rho.  Perhaps the story was invented or embellished after the battle.  Perhaps the chief miracle in the story is that Maxentius somehow decided to engage Constantine’s army outside the fortifications of the city rather than relying on a superior defensive position.  What is undoubtedly true is that after Constantine won the battle and made himself emperor, he intended to rule as a Christian.

            Pacifist Christians have often claimed that the conversion of Constantine brought about a terrible corruption of Christian moral theology.  They tell a story something like this.  The good news as preached by Jesus and his disciples was a gospel of peace that rejected participation in war, and for three centuries the Christian movement largely held true to its peaceable roots, in spite of periodically intense persecution.  With Constantine, however, the church suddenly turned in a diametrically different direction.  Christians were now welcomed into governmental positions, they served in the army, and they fought wars.  Church leaders such as Augustine invented a new moral theory, the theory of just war, to accommodate the changed historical situation.  The theory of the just war has dominated Christian moral theology from the fourth century to the present.  However, though it was invented and refined by centuries of theologians, the just war theory has never been anything but a failure.  It is, in fact, a corruption of the gospel.

            Now I myself am a pacifist Christian, and I have some sympathy for the pacifist interpretation of Constantine.  Nevertheless, I want to make clear that my talk tonight is not about that.  My topic is the politicization of Christianity, so I have to start with Constantine, but I do not want my remarks to be mistaken as one more speech by a peace Christian against just war theory.  Let’s leave that discussion for another time.

            Within a few months of taking the throne, Constantine was asked by church leaders in North Africa to resolve a dispute.  I won’t go into the details of the Donatist controversy tonight.  Suffice it to say there was a split in the church in North Africa, with two men, Donatus and Caecilian, as rival bishops.  The Donatists asked the new emperor to rule against Caecilian because, they said, he had been consecrated as bishop by a “traitor,” that is, one of the church leaders who handed over the scriptures during the recent persecution under emperor Diocletian.  Constantine referred the question to a council of bishops, and they ruled against Donatus and in favor of Caecilian.  The Donatists refused to accept the decision, even when a second council endorsed the first decision.  Constantine was not pleased with Donatist obstinacy, and he threatened to go to North Africa to deal with the situation personally.  Listen to his words.

 

I am going to make plain to them what kind of worship is to be offered to God… What higher duty have I as emperor than to destroy error and repress rash indiscretions, and so cause all to offer to Almighty God true religion, honest concord, and due worship?

 

            Constantine here expresses what might be called the “normal” position, speaking historically, about the politicization of Christianity.  Before Constantine, there were no Christian rulers.  And I think it is fair to say that for fourteen centuries after Constantine, almost every Christian emperor, king, queen, prince, prime minister, governor or noble would have agreed with him.  I think we can put it more strongly: until the seventeenth century, many Christian rulers would have taken it for granted that their highest duty as rulers was to “repress rash indiscretions, and so cause all to offer to Almighty God true religion.”  Let us call this a ruler’s “Constantinian Duty.”  In practice, of course, kings and princes often failed to live up to their Constantinian Duty; that is, they pursued wealth, glory, power, dynastic succession, or simple pleasure rather than their number one responsibility of making the people worship rightly.  But they would have agreed, at least publicly, that a ruler’s first job is to support right religion.

            Part of our theme tonight is “the need for introspection.”  As a modern person living in a liberal democracy, you may find Constantine’s paternalism off-putting.  But imagine yourself living sometime in the thousand years after Constantine, a sincere Christian and born into a position of political power.  Given the burden and privilege of power, should you not use it to promote the faith?  I think we can sympathize with Constantine and others like him who thought their Constantinian Duty outweighed all others.

            Christian rulers no longer believe it.  For example, in 2008, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain ran for president of the United States as Christians.  If either of them had been asked, he would have emphatically denied that it would be any part of his business as president to cause or promote “true religion.”  Former President Jimmy Carter, who, perhaps more than most U.S. presidents, has explicitly linked many of his public activities to his Christian faith, would undoubtedly agree with Obama and McCain.  These political leaders do not think they have a duty as president to promote true religion.  Similar observations could be made about Christian politicians in Canada, the U.K., the E.U., and many other places.

            Further, none of these Christian political leaders spend any time worrying about their Constantinian Duty.  Just as Constantine was sure that he had a Constantinian Duty, these political leaders take it for granted that they don’t.

            The change from Constantine’s view to the modern view came in the eighteenth century, and it can be traced to more than one cause.  On one hand, the philosophical movement we call the enlightenment sought to replace appeals to religious authority with appeals to reason.  Intellectual leaders thought that if the public square could be made a place of reason rather than religion, then peace would prevail. 

Second, and more important for our topic tonight, a strong motive arose within Christianity to deny the Constantinian Duty.  Consider these words from John Locke:

 

The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force: but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God.

 

Another seventeenth century voice, William Penn:

 

I shall not at this time make it my Business to manifest the Inconsistency that there is between the Christian Religion, and a forced Uniformity; not only because it hath been so often and excellently done by Men of Wit, Learning and Conscience, and that I have elsewhere largely deliver'd my Sense about it; but because Every free and impartial Temper hath of a long time observ'd, that such Barbarous Attempts were so far from being indulged, that they were most severely prohibited by Christ himself....

 

It may be that this idea first arose within Protestantism, especially versions of Protestantism that emphasize the individual’s free, uncoerced response to God.  But the idea spread, and today most branches of Christianity endorse it.  Notice Locke’s reasoning: it is because Christian faith “consists in the inward persuasion of the mind” that it would be wrong for a ruler—a Christian ruler, mind you—to try to make the people worship right.  And Penn said that Christ himself prohibited “barbarous attempts” to compel religious conformity.  The Constantinian Duty is no duty at all for Christians who understand faith in this way.

Here is a historical irony.  John Locke himself wrote that the Protestant Christian government of England should not tolerate Jews or Catholics!  He said this, not because he thought it was the government’s job to correct their beliefs, but because Locke thought Jews and Catholics would not be loyal subjects to a Protestant king.  There is an inconsistency here, but perhaps no worse than that of other men who proclaimed the equality of all while practicing slavery.  And perhaps there is a warning here for those of us today who blithely proclaim our belief in religious freedom while endorsing state actions that encroach upon it.

We see, then, different periods in the politicization of Christianity.  In the first three centuries, Christianity was relatively un-politicized.  The very early Christians refused to say, “Caesar is lord,” so they could not participate in Roman government, for example, by serving in the army.  Christians might fear the state or pray for government officials, but for the most part they were outsiders to government. 

With Constantine, Christianity entered a second phase during which it became highly politicized.  Church and government were entangled in myriad ways.  Popes and bishops tried to tell kings and emperors what to do, while kings and emperors sometimes killed, kidnapped, or threatened popes and bishops.  If anything, the entanglement of church and state was even more pronounced in the eastern part of the empire and in the Byzantine Empire that followed.  I will not take time to tell of the many evils that sprang from the entanglement of Christianity and the state in these centuries: wars, inquisitions, pogroms, and crusades.

In the eighteenth century a third era began, in which the entanglement of church and government has been greatly reduced.  Christians hold government positions of many kinds, but they do not think it proper to use the power of the state to promote right religion.

Someone might object that my three-phase summary of history greatly oversimplifies the politicization of Christianity.  You would be right.  Someone else might object that I have overstated the modern disentanglement of Christianity from government.  You would also be right.  But my overly simple history has this merit: it illustrates the wide variety of views among Christians when it comes to the question of political power.  And this should lead each of us to carefully consider his or her own view.

Some Christians, like those of the first three centuries, reject participation in the state, because the state often demands allegiance that should only be given to God and because the state uses violent, coercive power.  Other Christians, like Constantine, embrace participation in the state; they assume Christians can resist the idolatrous demands of the state and they believe the power of the state can be used to accomplish good things, even holy things.  Still other Christians, like William Penn or Jimmy Carter, pursue a middle path.  On this view, Christians may participate in government, but they must observe limitations on the use of state power. 

Most Christians today, if asked to choose, would identify with the third option.  Especially in liberal democracies, most of us think it is irresponsible not to concern ourselves with government to at least some degree.  We participate in government as Christians, not merely as citizens.  Simultaneously, we recognize limitations on the use of state power that we must obey if we are to be faithful to Christ.

Fundamentally, we must observe and protect freedom of religion.  Genuine faith in Christ cannot be compelled.  Therefore, precisely because we want people to have genuine faith in Christ, Christians must insist that the government respect religious freedom for all people.

Can we go beyond religious freedom?  I think so. 

Jesus commanded his followers to love their neighbors, and this explicitly includes those who are not Jesus’ followers.  In the political realm, love for neighbor means that Christians must support justice, that is, a fair distribution of opportunity, responsibility, and reward; peace, that is, freedom from acts of violence from others; and what used to be called common weal, that is, the living-well together of a community.  These are components of the biblical notion of shalom.  I suspect that Jews and Muslims would also endorse the prophetic notions of justice, peace and common weal, but it is my privilege to speak for Christianity.

Please note there is a problem here, a huge and wonderful problem.  Jesus’ command moves us to pursue justice, peace, and common weal, but Christians disagree with each other both theoretically and practically in regard to these key ideas.  They also agree and disagree with their non-Christian neighbors about justice, peace, and common weal.

I call this a wonderful problem, because it invites all of us to explore together the meaning of justice, peace, and common weal.  It is entirely possible and reasonable for us to agree that these things are legitimate goals of government, even when we disagree fairly substantially about how to go about achieving these ends.  

How silly it would be if I thought, as an individual, that I know best how to achieve shalom!  Surely I need to learn from other people, particularly those who disagree with me.  (This is a theme developed in my book, The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics.)  The fact that I follow Christ does not change this truth; I need to learn from those who disagree with me.

It would also be silly, I contend, for we who are Christians to think that we already know best how to achieve justice, peace, and common weal.  We need to learn from those who disagree with us.

Nothing I have said implies that Christians should cease to be Christians and think as Christians when they enter the public square.  I firmly disagree with those who say that Christians must restrict themselves to so-called secular reasons when they participate in politics.  But when Christians participate in the political arena, we must do so with a firm grasp on Christian truth.  If we want our neighbors to believe in Jesus, we must insist that they have genuine religious freedom; for without freedom they cannot find an “inward persuasion of the mind.”  If Christians aim to obey Jesus, we must try to learn what justice, peace, and common weal are, and we must do what we can—without impinging on religious freedom—to achieve some measure of these prophetic values.

Thank you for your kind attention.

 

 

           

Jacob and Esau

 

Reconciliation or Revenge

            I am scheduled to preach this week, with Genesis 33 as my text.  The story is superficially straightforward: Esau welcomes Jacob back to Palestine 20 years after Jacob fled from Esau.  The brothers are reconciled.  But there is much to consider between the lines.

            First, we should remember that for ancient Israel, Jacob is the patriarch and Esau the father of Edom.  Attitudes toward the international neighbor lie close to the surface.  Second, the prior chapters of Genesis make it clear that Jacob treated Esau badly, swindling him out of his inheritance as the older brother (though they were twins) and cheating him out of their father Isaac’s blessing.  Esau had good reason to resent Jacob.

            Jacob came back from twenty years in Paddan-Aram—the home of his mother Rebekah, where Jacob had acquired two wives, two lesser wives, eleven sons, and a great deal of wealth (mostly in the form of herds of cattle and flocks of sheep).  There may well have been a few hired men as part of his caravan, but Jacob had nothing like the 400 armed men with which Esau came to meet him.

            The meeting was a crisis for Jacob.  He feared Esau, for good reason.  The text describes Jacob’s elaborate attempt to appease Esau.  Before meeting Esau, Jacob wrestled with a “man” and received God’s blessing: Jacob became Israel.

            God had chosen Abraham.  The promise to Abraham was extended to Isaac and Jacob, though the story honestly shows Jacob’s unworthiness.  It is a story of grace and forgiveness, not righteousness.  The brothers are reconciled because Esau—icon of the foreigner—forgives.

            Notice how this story contrasts with many of the morality tales of our culture.  We do have “moral stories” after all; every culture does.  Our entertainment often offers us stories of good versus evil.  Consider some generic antagonists: 1) the murderer who exults in his power and taunts the good guy; 2) the manipulator who is always one step ahead of her victim, convincing everyone that her victim is guilty of some crime, and cleverly closing off any avenue of escape; 3) the illegal gangster whose organization sells addictive and deadly drugs and yet lives in luxury; or 4) the legal gangster whose organization swindles widows out of their life savings via robocalls selling empty promises.

            It’s not hard to point to examples of these bad guys.  Consider how you feel when watching these morality tales.  Consider also how, in these stories, there is “pay back”: the protagonist corners the murderer and shoots him; the victim turns the corner on the manipulator by fooling some other manipulator and creating a war between two manipulators; a team of police officers lure the gangster and his men into a battle where most of the gang is killed; the otherwise peaceful protagonist walks into the swindlers’ headquarters with gasoline and explosives, leaving it a smoldering wreck.

            Be honest with yourself.  How do the “pay back” scenes make you feel?  Do you rejoice at the destruction of the bad guys?  What does this say about the moral education we are giving ourselves?

            The problem isn’t only with our feelings.  Sometimes we are convinced by the “logic of intolerance,” which I described in The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics (p. 59).

1.     Truth is of infinite value.

2.     We can identify the liars.

3.     Therefore, we have an overriding duty to stop the liars.

The logic of intolerance seemingly gives us good reason to do whatever it takes to stop the liars.  (Imagine a proposal to invite a pro-choice speaker to a National Right to Life convention or the reverse, inviting a pro-life speaker to a NARAL meeting.)  In class lectures, I often illustrated the logic of intolerance with the example of Queen Mary, “bloody Mary,” who in the sixteenth century undermined her own authority in England by persecuting protestants.  As a Catholic, Mary thought she had a duty to suppress protestant preaching.

We can escape the logic of intolerance through Fallibilism.  This is the well-founded belief: “I might be wrong.”  Fallibilists will support civility because they can see the political enemy as a resource for better decision making.  As my friend Ron Mock often says, disagreement is a gift from God.  We ought to steward our disagreements by learning from each other.

“Wait a minute!”  Someone will object.  “I can be a fallibilist about many things, but some of my beliefs are commitments; I stake my life on them.  I cannot be a fallibilist about certain beliefs.  About some things, I cannot be open-minded.”

As a follower of Jesus, I agree with the objection.  I am committed to Jesus.  (Also, as a philosopher, it’s impossible to be open-minded about everything.  Some things stand fast for us, in Wittgenstein’s words.)

So, what should a follower of Jesus think about reconciliation vs. revenge?  The question only needs to be raised to see the answer.  “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.  First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23, 24)

Men in White

 

Angels

            In Mark’s telling, on the first day of the week after Jesus’ death, three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome—took spices to the tomb where Joseph had buried the body of Jesus.  When the women arrived, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb; inside the tomb they saw “a young man dressed in a white robe.” (Mark 16:5) The man in white told the women that Jesus had risen.

            For two millennia, Christian readers have understood the “young man” to be an angel, which was surely the intention of the author.  In Luke, the women see two men “in clothes that gleamed like lightening.”  A few verses later, the women’s report is summarized as “a vision of angels.”

            Of course, angels appear in other places in the gospel story.  In the first chapter of Luke, an angel named Gabriel announces the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and, a bit later, the birth of Jesus to Mary.  In Matthew, an “angel of the Lord” tells Joseph that her pregnancy is an act of God and that Joseph should go ahead and marry her.  Matthew also says that angels attended Jesus in the wilderness, after he had been tempted by the devil.

            Curious minds want to know!  Gabriel is named, so we assume they all have names.  Why not?  God is an infinite being.  He knows the stars by name, says Isaiah.  It would not be difficult for him to know each angel.  If they have names, they could have distinct personalities.

            Could have!  Do we know for sure?  No.  Scripture doesn’t answer all our questions.  But it seems plausible that angels are spiritual and rational beings—as most Christian theologians have taught.  Apparently, angels can “appear” as human beings, but their “bodies” are not a constituent element in their being.  People, on the other hand, do not merely “have” bodies; we are body/soul composites.

            Curious minds want to know!  Our lives make sense by means of the narratives we inhabit (an important theme in MacIntyre).  So: do angels have stories?  Like ours, angelic stories would all be subsumed into the great story of the Christ.  But their stories would differ from angel to angel.  The “young man” who met Mary, Mary, and Salome with the news of the resurrection was not just any angel; he was a particular angel.  We might imagine the angel experiencing joy and divine pleasure in this assignment.  Some of us (novelists or poets) might even put words to our imaginations.  And the door opens; a great poet might include angels in something called Paradise Lost.

            Speculation, however delightful, must not obscure the main point.  We don’t know the name of the “young man in white clothes,” but we do know what he said to the women.  It is the message he conveyed to them that matters.

            “Don’t be alarmed.  You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.  He has risen!  He is not here.  See the place where they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  There you will see him.”

           

           

Reflections on the Death of a Friend

 

Hope for Tom

            Tom Fieldhouse died last Friday.  I first met Tom in 1982, almost 43 years ago.  He was a pre-teen in Maplewood Friends Church when I arrived there as a young pastor.  After high school, Tom attended George Fox, but as a computer science student he never took any of my philosophy courses.  Later, as a young adult, Tom and his wife Jaymi visited Karen and me for supper in our house in Newberg. 

Later still (much later) I discovered that Tom and Jaymi lived on 7^th street in Dundee, not far from the house Sarah and I purchased when we married in 2018.  Last fall, Tom brought a piece of mis-delivered mail to our house; apparently, mail delivery mistook one house number for the other.  Tom guessed that the “Philip Smith” in the address might be his friend from decades before and ventured to our door to confirm the guess.

            The death was expected.  I followed the progression of Tom’s cancer by reading Jaymi’s posts on Facebook.  I last visited their house on Sunday, five days before Tom died and only two days after Jaymi reported that Tom had been put on hospice care.

            I had no close, intimate talk with Tom.  He was very frail, confined to his bed.  I can’t describe his mental or spiritual state in his last days.  I have no report from his own mouth about his faith.  Nevertheless, Tom’s death has provoked me to think again about hope.  I wrote a book on this topic, Understanding Hope, published three years ago, and my computer hosts dozens of entries in its “Hope Essays” file.  I’ve thought often about hope in recent years.  And with the death of my friend and neighbor, I’m thinking about it again.

            Christian hope focuses on resurrection.  In our science fiction, we can imagine technologies that replicate human bodies down to the last detail: variants on the Star Trek transporter beam.  If God exists, what is possible in science fiction is possible for God.  Since resurrection is possible, and since it is desired, resurrection may be the object of hope.  Some philosophers warn against hoping for unlikely things, but others have pointed out that even unlikely hopes can contribute to the good life for human beings.  But I’m not interested in exploring that debate now.

            Philosophers often tell the following story.

Suppose resurrection involved something like the transporter room fiction, not that the actual molecules of a body were transported from ship to planet, but that a transporter machine “scanned” a person’s body down to the atomic level and transmitted that information to the receiving machine at the other location.  The receiving station then reconstituted the body from organic compounds and free molecules.  The person who walked into the sending machine would be destroyed, but an exact copy of the person would be produced by the receiving machine.  We assume the reconstituted person would have all the physical and psychological traits of the earlier person, including memories, desires, and intentions.

Is this science fiction “resurrection” a good analogue to the resurrection for which Christians hope?  Christian philosophers disagree among themselves.  Some are physicalists, who say the physical body just is the person; Christian physicalists remind us that the New Testament hope is for resurrection, not “soul” survival.  For the physicalists, the transporter “resurrection” is a good analogue for gospel resurrection.  Other Christian thinkers are substance dualists, who say a person is a combination of a physical body and an immaterial soul.  Christian dualists agree that the New Testament teaches a resurrection of the body, but the real person is the soul, not the body that houses it.  On the dualist’s view, the person who walks into the transporter machine dies, and the duplicate who appears in the receiving machine is another person entirely.  Without the soul, the new person is someone else.

I lean toward the physicalist side, but I’m not sure.  The literature is full of interesting arguments, pro and con.  More importantly: What do I want for Tom?  What should I hope for?

I hope that God will resurrect Tom.  But I believe God heals sick people, not always but sometimes and in some cases, he uses doctors.  Could God use scientists to resurrect people?  Suppose some future scientist uses “Jurassic Park” technology to create an Abraham Lincoln clone.  That’s not a perfect analogue, of course, since the clone would have Lincoln’s DNA without his psychological history.  The clone would not be a resurrected Lincoln, only a Lincoln copy.  Without time travel, scientists couldn’t access or replicate the real Lincoln.

Now, I hope that Tom will be resurrected, but I also hope that he would be changed.  (See 1 Corinthians 15:51.)  I want the resurrected Tom to be identifiably and genuinely Tom, but I don’t want him to be exactly as he was at any point in his life, certainly not as he was in his final hours, a cancer-ridden wraith.  I hope that Tom will be better and complete; certainly, I want similar things for myself.

No scientist is wise enough to make the changes in Tom that gospel hope promises.  So the science fiction analogues fail.  Even the transporter story, which might yield an exact replica of a person at the moment of transport, does not promise spiritual change.

Perhaps most important, I hope that the resurrected Tom will experience the love and welcome and justice of God.  Tom will not be infinitely wise or good, but he will rejoice to “travel” deeper and deeper into infinite wisdom and love.

           

Mutuality

 

Reflections on a Trip to Mexico

            I spent eight days on a service trip to Door of Faith Orphanage in Mexico over spring break.  In just three days since returning, I’ve been asked repeatedly about my experience.  If for no other reason than to respond to friends’ questions, I need to think about it.

            Superficially, not much happened.  It took a day and a half to drive to La Mision and equally long to return.  Our service to the orphanage consisted mostly in cleaning kitchens, trash removal, painting rooms in the older boys’ dorm, and small repairs.  In the afternoons, some of our group (children and young adults) played soccer or basketball with children from Door of Faith.  One afternoon I gave chess lessons to Humberto, an eight-year-old boy who knew how the pieces move but little more.  Next year I plan to take a chess set with me, to invite kids to play each day of the visit.

            On a deeper level, I learned about mutuality.  That is, I learned a little, not everything.  I suspect I have much more to learn.

            When American Christians go to foreign countries on short term mission trips, they face not-so-subtle temptations to think of themselves as superior in some way to the people they serve.  It’s easy to think we know the right way to do things (build buildings, pave roads, fix plumbing, etc.); in some cases, we actually do know how.  Feelings of spiritual superiority can infect us as well.  In our minds, they are victims of poverty (often they are poor), ignorance (the children attend school every day), and lack of proper planning.  We think: they should listen to us.  They should do it the way we do it.

            But teaching and learning is a two-way street.  We have much to learn about how things work in Mexico.  (I’m sure the same is true of other countries.)  Our team’s leader, John Laney, lent me a book written, in part, by one of the directors of Door of Faith, Reciprocal Missions.  The title captures much of the thrust of the book.  The spiritual benefit of short-term mission experiences flow both ways.  We serve and are served.  We teach and we learn. 

            Back at GFU this week, my honors students discussed Whose Religion is Christianity, by Lamin Sanneh and The Next Christendom, by Philip Jenkins.  These authors confront their readers with facts on the ground that upset the expectations of many people.  The Christian movement grew rapidly in the second half of the 20^th century, and it grow not through the imposition of European structures (the colonial era died in the early 20^th century) but through indigenous discovery of the gospel.  (Sanneh identifies translation of the Bible into local vernacular languages as a crucial factor.)  In the 21^st century, world Christianity is not mostly white or European or North American or rich.  Most Christians are brown or black and poor.

            Our mission trip to La Mision exposed me, for just a week, to the majority church.  Of course, one instance of Christian ministry in just one country gives only a tiny window into the world church.  But it’s better than ignorance.

            Sanneh argues that we must be open to the possibility that God is doing something in the world.  We should not try to explain away the explosive growth of the majority church with the tools of 19^th century sociology and philosophy (according to which the global church resulted from colonial impositions and will fade away through the power of modernism).  The majority church is not the “global” church (European churches multiplied everywhere) but a truly “world” church, rising as people encounter God revealed in Jesus.

           

Policies, Prayers, and the President

 

Praying for the President

 

            In 2016, I quit the Republican Party because it nominated Donald Trump for president, and I’ve never voted for him.  I make this first point to establish my “never Trump” bona fides.  I thought then, and think now, that Donald Trump is morally unfit for the office.  Nevertheless, now that he is president, it is my duty as a follower of Jesus to pray for Mr. Trump.  How do I do that?

            It’s possible, of course, to offer “generic” prayers for political leaders.  I can ask God to give some office holder—mayor, congressperson, governor, president, etc.—wisdom and courage to seek justice and shalom.  I can ask that the eyes of the powerful and rich be opened to the needs of the weak and poor.  And so on.

            But what about specific policies pursued by a political leader?  How should I pray for a legislator who wants to make “death with dignity” easier?  (I recently learned of an effort in Oregon to greatly weaken legal safeguards around assisted suicide, which would increase deaths from depression and, I think, move Oregon significantly closer to involuntary euthanasia.)  Do I pray for God’s guidance and blessing for the leader while also praying that her policy be defeated?  It seems I should.

            I pray, then, for God to guide President Trump into the ways of justice and shalom.  I rejoice that Mr. Trump has publicly said he aims to broker peace in places of conflict, including Gaza and Ukraine.  Naturally, I pray that God give the president success in peacemaking.

            But how does Mr. Trump aim to resolve these conflicts?  In the Gaza case, he publicly proposed that the Gazans (about 2 million people) move to Egypt and/or Jordan, so that the US could take possession of Gaza and turn it into a Rivera-like resort.  Regarding Ukraine, he invited Zelenskyy to the White House, where he berated and insulted him on live television.  Before and after the infamous meeting, Trump adopted Putin-like language about the conflict, calling Zelenskyy a dictator and assigning responsibility for the war to Ukraine.  Apparently, Trump thinks it’s their fault the Russians invaded.

            If Trump had offered to move 2 million Gazans to the US (we have lots of land in Nevada and Utah that looks superficially like Gaza) so the US could develop an Eastern Mediterranean resort, then we might have taken his proposal seriously.  Two million immigrants would be a much smaller proportional burden on us than on Egypt and Jordan.  But Trump doesn’t want immigrants to the US if they might be a burden.  Trump’s Gaza proposal strikes me as fantasy thinking.

            The Ukraine case may be even worse.  The news services today report that Russian government spokespersons have happily endorsed Trump’s rejection of Zelenskyy.  It seems to them, and more and more it seems to me, that Trump has simply adopted the Russian analysis of the Ukraine conflict.  To wit: Ukraine is not a real country; historically, it was and should be a part of greater Russia; therefore, any move by NATO to include Ukraine or support its continued independence amounts to an attack on Russia.  The real cause of the war was Ukrainian refusal to submit to Russian rule.  Thus, the way to peace is for Ukraine to sell minerals to the US and trust that Russia will abide by a ceasefire.  (Trump’s friend Putin would not interfere with US economic interests in Ukraine—right?)

            As a follower of Jesus, I must pray for peace between Israel and Gaza and between Russia and Ukraine.  I must pray for Donald Trump.  Should I pray that God give success to Trump’s policies that seem hopelessly inadequate to the task?  Should I pray that foolish policies be defeated?  (The policies seem foolish to me, but perhaps I am wrong.)  Should I pray that Trump’s thinking change, that he and his advisors find new policies to pursue?