Donald Trump, the Vandal in Chief, sends in the military to solve a problem he created

"Law and Order" is a reliable old tactic for authoritarians

We’re living in serious times – a dangerous moment. So here’s the theme that will permeate my work this summer:

The battle is on, but it’s not primarily a battle in the streets. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. And the question to be decided is this: Will we embrace a perverted understanding of justice built on authoritarian “law and order” messaging, or will we embrace something that looks more like biblical justice, which involves fairness and equity and the rule of law, and calls us to care for everyone – to build a peaceful society for all of God’s children?

Today we have protesters in the streets, and a convicted felon president with an itchy Insurrection Act finger stirring the pot, hoping for an excuse to live out his domination fantasies in the streets of America.

So that’s not good.

But worse, from my point of view as a former Republican and retired evangelical pastor, is that conservative Christians did this to us. Many are people I once pastored, and I used to think we shared some basic beliefs about truth and justice and whatnot.

It turns out I was wrong. My people – my former people – did this to us. They gave us Donald Trump, once again.

In fact, they’re still doing this to us, as secure in their self-righteous bigotry and self-curated ignorance as ever. They could stop this madness tomorrow if they stood up and demanded that their Republican representatives bring Trump to heel. But those representatives know the ugly truth about many of the Christians who’ve now voted for Trump three times:

They like this stuff.

So, yeah…that’s not good.

Nonetheless, I haven’t given up on appealing to my former people to face the dark realities of the man they brought to power. So toward that end, I’m going to share an old piece I wrote that might help us understand these times better.

If you’ve ever tried to look at a faint object in the nighttime sky, you’ll know the frustration of seeing it for a split second before it disappears just as you lock onto it. That’s a function of how the human eye works – the cones in the center of our retina aren’t ideal for picking up a dim light in the darkness. But if we look slightly away from the object, we engage the cells on the outer parts of our retina, which perceive light and dark much more clearly.

In the same way, it’s often hard to see clearly when we look directly at a controversial event – especially when we’re in the middle of it, and especially when we have voices telling us we’re not seeing what we’re seeing. I posted a YouTube video last night about Donald Trump sending United States Marines into LA to use force against American citizens. And of course, the usual suspects showed up in my comments to tell me I was “lying” – that the Marines were only being deployed to “protect federal buildings.”

If the phrase “use force against American citizens” is not the implied threat – if it’s not the obvious purpose – of sending in Marines, then why send…Marines?

So it may be helpful to step back a moment – to look at the situation in a broader frame. Donald Trump’s tactics haven’t changed over the years. He’s always followed the playbook other demagogues before him have used: Stir up as much conflict as possible, then offer your “strength” as the only solution. He’s done it before, and he’s simply trying to take the same strategy further, this time around.

I wrote a book five years ago, during the 2020 presidential campaign, called MAGA Seduction: Resisting the Debasement of the Christian Conscience.

Spoiler alert: 80% of white evangelicals chose not to resist the “MAGA seduction,” and their conscience has been 80% debased – as predicted.

I stand by what I wrote in Chapter Five of that book, which I called “Vandalism.” I wrote the chapter five years ago, in the midst of the George Floyd protests. Another serious moment in American history. Another moment that Donald Trump attempted to enflame for his own purposes.

I remember what a big deal it was for me, at the time, to state so clearly that I supported the George Floyd protests. If you knew my background in the conservative movement before I went into ministry, you’d understand how many things had to change inside of me to bring me to a point, in 2020, where I could write a chapter like this. It helped that I had disengaged entirely from the right-wing echo chamber for almost my entire 20 years of ministry.

As you read this, you’re reading the thoughts of someone who was trying to understand the implications of biblical justice in a very heated moment in our history, and you’ll see that the issues I was sorting through, five years ago, are the same issues we’re dealing with today.

Of course, some things are different, today. Since I wrote this chapter:

- Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd.

- Donald Trump lost the 2020 election

- Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a deadly insurrection that was widely predicted, and was encouraged by his rhetoric.

- Trump was indicted in four separate criminal cases, including charges at the state and federal level.

- Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records related to hush money payments during the 2016 election.

- Trump was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll, in a manner disturbingly consistent with his own words on the Access Hollywood tape.

- Nonetheless, evangelical Christians overwhelmingly chose Donald Trump in the primaries – I repeat, in the primaries – over every other potential Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election.

- So Trump was the nominee again in 2024, and ran a campaign that weaponized racial rhetoric, enflamed fears over “migrant crime,” and revived “law and order” messaging, once again, as a central theme.

- Evangelical Christians knew all of this – and still, 80% of white evangelicals voted to make Donald Trump president, once again.

- On his first day in office, Trump pardoned every single one of the January 6th rioters, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.

- IMPORTANTLY – this is not inconsistent with authoritarian “law and order” rhetoric. It’s part and parcel of how authoritarians define law and order to mean keeping the Others down, while protecting the actions of their own followers.

With all of that said, here’s that chapter I wrote in 2020:

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Vandalism

We look for justice, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away.

For our offenses are many in your sight,

and our sins testify against us.
Our offenses are ever with us,
and we acknowledge our iniquities:
rebellion and treachery against the Lord,

turning our backs on our God,
inciting revolt and oppression,

uttering lies our hearts have conceived.
So justice is driven back,

and righteousness stands at a distance;
truth has stumbled in the streets,

honesty cannot enter.
Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.[1]

I’m a strong supporter of the people who came out by the millions to protest the murder of George Floyd, and I’m proud of my adult children for participating in the demonstrations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. If they’d been arrested for participating, provided they did no damage to people or property, I would have gladly bailed them out and encouraged them to keep up the good work. I hope the protests continue until meaningful, measurable, lasting change takes place.

This chapter is one contribution I can make to that movement, by giving some biblical rationale for the protests, sharing my first-hand accounts of my own experience as a resident of the Twin Cities during these turbulent times, and calling out the sin of white evangelical identity politics that encourages Donald Trump to hijack, distort, and weaponize the most difficult aspects of this troubled season.

The Vandalism of Shalom

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. wrote a wonderfully helpful book on sin several years ago. In the first chapter, “The Vandalism of Shalom,” he writes:

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes in the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.[2]

That picture of shalom animated my preaching for years. Human beings are created for that, so it’s small wonder we groan, inwardly, when we encounter injustice and suffering in the world.

Plantinga describes sin this way:

Shalom is God’s design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder.[3]

I’m reminded of Plantinga’s phrase “vandalism of shalom” as my beloved Twin Cities go through a time of intense trouble regarding race. When I walk to the grocery store, now, I pass by several buildings just a few blocks from my home that were destroyed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Our local bank branch may never reopen, a couple of strip malls are completely shuttered, our nearest auto parts store is a pile of burnt rubble, and several of our gas stations look to be permanently closed.

All of what I just listed matters – it’s important, especially to the owners of these businesses, the employees, and the less fortunate residents of the neighborhood who have more difficulty traveling out of the neighborhood than I do. I oppose destruction, looting, and violence. It’s tragic when those things happen, and I mourn over and condemn violence to any person.

It’s also frustrating that these events serve as a distraction from the underlying issues that fed the unrest in the first place. Too many of us want to avoid discussing the deep causes of the racial tension that led to the legitimate protests, so we latch onto episodes of violence and mayhem in order to shift the focus off our own role, or the ways in which we benefit from a system that keeps whole classes of people down in our country.

“Vandalism” strikes me as the perfect metaphor to use as we consider these issues. This chapter explores how our nation’s shalom is being vandalized daily.

Unsurprisingly, I see Donald Trump as the Vandal in Chief.

Every movement on the left or the right has its radical fringe, and that radical fringe can be activated to do violence, under the right circumstances. What’s unprecedented in the modern history of our country is that the President of the United States takes active measures to stir up the divisions and grievances and hatreds of the fringe, on both sides. At best, his words are insanely irresponsible, and at worst, they’re calculated to bring about the exact chaos we’re experiencing. Michael Gerson writes:

In this atmosphere – where the wrong word or action can encourage bloodshed – there is one urgent, overriding political question: Is a candidate calming the situation or inflaming it for his or her perceived advantage? Anyone feeding conflict is committing a crime against democracy, a sin against self-government.

In the 2020 presidential election, we have one candidate, Joe Biden, who strongly and routinely criticizes the excesses of both left and right. And we have one candidate who strongly and routinely criticizes the excesses of the left, while claiming that the entire left is complicit in those excesses. “They’re not protesters,” President Trump said of protesters on Aug. 28, “those are anarchists, they’re agitators, they’re rioters, they’re looters.”

More than this, Trump has sent messages of encouragement to agitators on the hard right. Remember in April when Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” seemingly with the aim of rallying armed protesters against that state’s public health measures in response to the pandemic? In the same Twitter spasm, he sent the message: “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” This gratuitous mention of gun rights reads like an air kiss to his most paranoid armed supporters.[4]

We can’t be surprised when Trump’s supporters swarm the Michigan Statehouse armed with assault rifles in order to protest the governor’s health mandates; or when a 17-year-old Trump supporter drives 30 miles to Kenosha, Wisconsin with an assault rifle in the name of protecting businesses; or when a caravan of Trump supporters drive through Portland and shoot protesters with paintball guns and spray them with chemicals from the back of pickup trucks. Gerson writes:

More recently, Trump described a caravan of MAGA activists streaming into Portland, Ore., to confront the left as “Great Patriots!” And he later tried to explain away their aggressiveness. “The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected,” he tweeted. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer.” And so we have the right-wing version of root-cause thinking – the employment of explanation as justification.

And we can’t be surprised when, after so many appeals to our darkest nature by the most powerful man in the world, people end up dying. When the 17-year-old with the automatic weapon kills two people at the protest, what kind of insanity does it take for even one adult to attempt to excuse that or write it off as self-defense? Yet that’s what the president’s supporters are doing – ignoring the fact that almost every one of them would have been horrified a few years ago to think that AR-15-armed teenagers would go looking for trouble amid racial protests in Trump’s America, and that the police would welcome them. We can’t be surprised that when a caravan of Trump supporters drives through protesters seeking to incite violence, violence ensues.

Jonathan Last wrote an article for the Bulwark last year called “Donald Trump Is an Arsonist Pretending to Be a Firefighter: Don’t be Fooled.”[5] The president has spent the past four years launching verbal incendiaries into our body politic on an hourly basis, and now he claims that the resulting hatreds and division reflect “Joe Biden’s America.”

I’m tired of seeing him get away with that.

If it weren’t for conservative Christians giving that preposterous narrative oxygen, it would have suffocated long ago, crushed by the weight of its own load of contradictions.

Gerson ends his piece this way:

Trump is not being innovative or creative in these efforts. He treads the well-worn path of authoritarians the world over. An atmosphere of social conflict and chaos allows a strongman to offer himself as the only solution. Encouraging lawlessness and disorder is the favorite pastime of law-and-order rulers.

The shock comes in seeing the tumor of such tactics burst with a rally on the South Lawn of the White House. In the aftermath, the question to American voters is blunt: Will we allow the poisoner of our civic culture to be its doctor? A healthy democracy will refuse to reward the author of its own discord.

But as damaging as he is to our shalom, Trump is not the main point of this chapter. I’m writing because too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ have enabled and celebrated this president’s vandalism of our system of government and the bonds of brotherhood that bind our nation together. Once again, we’re the problem. We allow this.

The recent vandalism, destruction, and loss of life in some of our cities could end up going in several directions. It may all just die out as we collectively slough off yet another opportunity for meaningful growth and change. It may turn out to be the spasmodic death throes of our civil society as we’re overcome by our internal rot, unwilling to seek after the healing available to us. Or, through prayer, hard work, a season of intensely difficult national discussion, and personal repentance by each one of us, we may someday remember this time as the birth pangs we endured in order to create a more perfect union.

But we can all agree on this: Donald Trump lacks the character, the skills, and the desire to lead such a rebirth. Four more years of this president will guarantee an escalation of the troubles among us because rage, fear, grievance, and division are his native tongue.

The vandalism of shalom is his brand.

Vandalizing A Life That Mattered

On May 25, 2020, four Minneapolis Police officers murdered George Floyd, a black man, on video.

Mr. Floyd had purchased cigarettes at a convenience store with a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. As the officers attempted to arrest him, he displayed visible signs of being under the influence of a substance. With his hands cuffed behind his back, the officers led him to a squad car, and as they tried to get him into the car, he panicked, complaining of claustrophobia. He struggled and ended up on the ground, his face to the pavement, his arms pinned behind his back. While one officer stood guard and menaced the bystanders who pleaded with them to stop, the other three knelt on his back and neck, gradually and methodically crushing the life out of him.

Murder may not have been their intent, but domination certainly was. And not just domination of the man beneath their knees – they also asserted their lordship over the innocent people who gathered and screamed and pleaded with them to stop. One man reasoned with the officers, pointing out from his own police training how they were putting George Floyd’s life at risk. They didn’t answer – just stared – grinding the souls of the helpless spectators and those of us who watched it on video into the asphalt along with George Floyd’s body.

The senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck the entire time, through all his gasping, yet polite, pleas for mercy: “I can’t breathe…Please, the knee on my neck…I can’t breathe, sir.” The New York Times writes:

Mr. Chauvin, who is white, kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for at least eight minutes and 15 seconds, according to a Times analysis of timestamped video. Our video investigation shows that Mr. Chauvin did not remove his knee even after Mr. Floyd lost consciousness and for a full minute and 20 seconds after paramedics arrived at the scene.[6]

At one point, as Mr. Floyd grew unresponsive, one of the spectators lunged, almost involuntarily, toward the police officers, because that’s what human beings do when we witness a man being tortured to death. Chauvin quickly whipped out his mace and pointed it at the bystander, forcing him to back off while Chauvin continued his public execution.

George Floyd’s life seeped out of his body under Chauvin’s knee like so much dust – of no value – a nuisance to be swept off the street, nothing more. And all the people pleading and begging, traumatized, helpless to stop the carnage – none of their lives and experiences merited even a slight pause in the cold, clinical snuffing out of this one bothersome, insignificant existence.

Seeing it unfold so clearly on video, I felt a sense of rage and helplessness to which I’m not accustomed. But I also felt convicted, because this is my city, this is my home, and I should not have been surprised.

We’ve had other episodes like this in the Twin Cities, even on film. On July 6, 2016, a police officer shot and killed Philando Castile just a few miles from my home, during a routine traffic stop, while his partner and her young daughter watched. The officer had asked him to show him his license. Mr. Castile informed the officer that he had a licensed concealed handgun on his person and asked if he should reach for his wallet. A miscommunication of some sort ensued, and as he slowly reached for his wallet, the officer panicked and shot seven times, hitting Mr. Castile five times. Mr. Castile’s partner live-streamed the aftermath, as he sat in the car bleeding to death from five gunshot wounds.[7]

So as I watched George Floyd’s last moments on video, I knew that whatever level of pain I felt paled in comparison to the pain that people of color have been feeling in my city for a long time.

I wondered:

- If the cops had taken their knees off George Floyd just before he died, and managed to revive him, would any of us outside of that neighborhood have ever heard about it?

- If the brave young woman who filmed the tragedy had not done so, but merely told the story of George Floyd’s death along with the rest of the gathered crowd, would I have believed them?

- How many similar events have people in my city witnessed over the years that were never recorded?

- How bad must it have been in the past, if this sort of thing still happens today?

- What does that history do to the black community in my city?

- What has it done to me, to my own conscience and capacity for empathy, to participate in a system that would have swept this incident under the rug for most of my lifetime?

And when horrific things happen, we often find ourselves asking this fair and honest question: where was Jesus in this? Where was Jesus when justice got the hook and subjugation took center stage? Where was Jesus in George Floyd’s final seconds of consciousness, as he observed himself stretched out, struggling to breathe, fading, aware he had been reduced to a helpless public spectacle, knowing he was dying. Alone.

Where was Jesus?

Under Officer Chauvin’s knee.

Complex Issues Require Wisdom, Not Division

Human nature tempts us to believe that God sees the world the way we do. I’m certain that’s wrong in all cases, because even when we may have a true belief, we can never see an issue in its entirety.

I feel the need to bring this up because our nation seems ready to erupt in bloodshed if we all don’t check ourselves. Because the president has decided to use violent rhetoric around law and order as his chief political weapon, I, for instance, have begun to hear even more threatening messages from Christians about my own stance against him. No longer am I just accused of wanting to murder babies. I’m also accused, now, of wanting to burn down cities. And the people accusing me are taking on a harder edged tone. For example, this week I received numerous messages from an unbalanced person, a law student, who kept using the phrase, “You have been warned.” He sent me a section of a pastor’s article that (he said) explains why abortion is worthy of death.

I oppose Donald Trump and all his Christian enablers, but I refuse to choose a side in the more complicated cultural issues we’re experiencing regarding race, policing, law and order, damage to property, etc. We ought not to have “sides” in such basic cultural conversations. We ought to have perspectives, and argue intelligently for our perspectives, but we must also remain teachable.

I oppose police brutality, and I believe it happens far more often to black people. I oppose looting and burning. I believe we need a police force, but I doubt that force must be structured like many of our existing police departments. And I have a lifetime’s worth of learning and correction ahead of me if I want to be able to speak well on those subjects.

My personal experiences with the St. Paul Police Department, (who were not involved in George Floyd’s murder), make me cautious about arriving at any fast and firm conclusions regarding the state of our police force. As a pastor in Frogtown, the least affluent and most ethnically mixed neighborhood in St. Paul, I had the opportunity to observe the SPPD on many occasions. When you do ministry in the neighborhood, things just happen from time to time. In every circumstance but one, when the officers showed up, they used utter professionalism – their training appears to be top notch. Even in some heightened interactions, they de-escalated the situation through what a friend of mine, a former cop, called “verbal jujitsu,” a means of absorbing and redirecting the emotion in order to bring a tense encounter to a safe conclusion.

I benefitted from their training one afternoon last year as I headed out to the alley carrying several bags full of empty beer bottles – the remnants of a home brewing hobby I’ve let slide. I live in my head and rarely pay attention to my surroundings, so I didn’t notice several cops in the alley about 20 feet away, with their backs to me, guns drawn, peering around my neighbor’s garage at the next house over. I was staring at the sidewalk, as always, so I didn’t see them, and they didn’t hear me approach. My arms were full, so I did what I always do: I kicked the latch on my chain link gate and pushed it open in one loud motion and passed through.

They all spun on me and raised their weapons just as I saw them: two had shotguns, and one had what looked like a small automatic rifle of some sort. I was stunned by how quickly they raised their weapons, yet not one pointed directly at me. They each aimed just in front of me, then lowered their weapons immediately. We stared at each other for a few seconds, then I asked, “Should I stand still?”

“No, that’s fine. Just go about your business,” the leader said, and I went on my way, happy that no one would have to wonder why I chose to die over a few dozen empty beer bottles.

I believe and hope that if I had been black, their training would have been just as good, and I’d still be alive to write this today. But I can’t say that for sure, and I don’t blame anyone who disagrees.

Because I have one more story.

I mentioned that it went well with the SPPD every time but one. I happened to be on sabbatical, sitting by the Grand Canal in Venice late at night when I heard about this one, so I didn’t witness it myself. But one of our young black men from church, a real good kid of about 14 years old, ended up in a tussle with a police officer at our church picnic. The cop, who was much larger than the young man, wrestled him to the ground and laid on him, pinning him, while he got him under control. A crowd gathered and tried to get the officer to let him up, while others talked with our young church brother to help him calm down and cooperate. It was all captured on film and made the news.

The incident divided opinions at our church, and I could understand all sides when I got back from Italy and heard the story from several angles. It taught me something: everyone witnessed the same incident, but they all interpreted what they saw in different ways. For instance, the people who watched it were split regarding whether the officer used excessive force to pin the young man to the ground – it looked brutal to some, while others said it was normal, safe police work.

The other divide involved whether the young man or the officer instigated the altercation. Again, almost everyone agreed on the facts, but the split came on interpretation. Everyone agreed the officer had been frustrated and said some very unkind things to the young man’s mother, and the young man confronted the officer. Everything else about the various interpretations of what happened hinged on each viewer’s understanding of authority.

The Saint Paul Police Department made what I think, to this day, was a good decision. They decided the officer’s actions did not merit termination, but they did give him a sizeable suspension – not for use of excessive force, because in their judgment, the film showed that he handled the physical altercation appropriately. They suspended him because he let his anger and frustration at something else get under his skin, and he escalated the situation. I have no idea whether race played a role in his decision to escalate. But I know, from observing these men and women for years, how important it is to them to de-escalate, and that didn’t happen in this case.

I share these stories to give one white man’s experience with law enforcement in this city, and to paint a picture of how hard it can be to sort these issues out, even with witnesses. The George Floyd and Philando Castile cases were obvious failures on the part of the police, but the issues involved on a day by day basis with policing are complex, and worthy of in-depth discussion.

Minneapolis made national news again, a few nights ago, and my son and I found ourselves in the middle of it. We were on a walk at night in downtown Minneapolis when all hell broke loose. Police cars screamed past us, groups of young, mostly black men and women were running in different directions, and the mood felt much angrier than any of the recent protests. As we approached the chaos, a young black man with his face wrapped in a bandana walked past us and said, “You guys better go home.”

It turns out the police had caught up with a black man on Nicollet Mall, near where we were walking, who had allegedly killed someone earlier in the day. As they approached him, he shot himself. A rumor spread that the police had shot him, and that was enough to set people off in this heightened environment. The police released a video, as soon as possible, to let people know what had happened, but the looting and property damage had already started.

My son and I talked with several people amid the pandemonium, to hear what they knew, and to understand what they thought of it all. One of them, a black man about my son’s age, told us he felt disgusted by the looting. He wore a George Floyd face mask, so he clearly identified with the goal of the protest movement, but he kept shaking his head, saying, “They keep talking about the cops killing us, but no one ever talks about black on black crime. That guy that just shot himself murdered another black guy earlier in the day in the parking ramp. Black on black crime, man. That’s the epidemic, and nobody talks about that.”

I said, “Well, I’m listening. I’m not going to say that, myself, but I hear you saying it. I’m just trying to learn.” His girlfriend nodded her head at me, affirming my decision not to spout my opinion.

These things are complex. If we start choosing sides on these issues, we won’t make progress. I would suggest, instead, that we seek after God’s heart and bring encouragement and correction wherever he leads us. And right now, I’m convinced that our nation is being led by God to face up to the racial injustice that we’ve ignored for too long. We have an opportunity to make progress. That ought not to be about sides.

I despise the way the Trump campaign, as a means of dividing us into teams, has seized on the acts of vandalism and looting that have accompanied some of the protests. Sadly, I know the law and order message works with too many white evangelical Christians. If our friends try to force us to choose a side by posting scary, chaotic videos on Facebook, it begins to seem that we’re somehow going against God’s will to support the protesters who are bravely calling our attention to the systemic racism in our country.

It’s ironic that many of the people who seem most afraid of and angry about the rioting and looting are the least likely to ever experience it. As I mentioned, we had buildings burned just blocks from our home in St. Paul, and my son and I literally walked into a national news story about it the other night. And sure, I was nervous. But these are my neighbors – we live in the same city and want the same things, most of us. My son and I walked a few blocks from the chaos and sat outside the skyscraper where we both work, beautifully lit up in the night sky, to wait for an Uber. We watched many groups of people walk by, some visibly angry, none threatening. At one point a small group of young black men and women came by, and one of the women looked at us and said, loudly, “We know what you two are up to!” We saw the glimmer in her eyes over her mask and realized she was teasing us, giving us a taste of what it’s like to be suspected, to be the outsiders in a fraught situation, and we all laughed – a shared release of tension – a small restoration of shalom.

Donald Trump Vandalizes the Rule of Law

The president’s appeal to our deepest fears and prejudices may work – it may even win him the election, but heaven help our nation if it does. A victorious Donald Trump, if he wins in this despicable manner, will feel vindicated, empowered, unaccountable, and unleashed.

As for me, I won’t silently let this president, a man who’s spent his entire life committing gross illegality and shielding himself from justice by the wealth he inherited from his father, dictate that Christians ought to be on the side of his phony, fear-based, “law and order” message. The law, to hear this president talk about it, either serves him as a tool against his enemies, or works against him as an impediment to be overcome to achieve his malicious intent.

Greg Sargent recently wrote an important article, one that’s crucial to our understanding of the sinister nature of Donald Trump’s appeals to law and order. He writes:

“Law and order” without the rule of law is neither “law” nor “order.” And any news organization that uncritically describes President Trump’s reelection campaign as premised on “law and order” appeals, without placing his concerted efforts to destroy the rule of law in America front and center alongside them, is helping to drain those words of all meaning.

He talks about the president’s recent tweetstorm in which he fanned the flames of violence with overheated rhetoric about the protests, then details some of the ways Trump is undermining the rule of law in plain view, in order to win the election:

Trump corruptly used the White House as a stage in his political convention. His secretary of state likely broke the law to speak at it. His Senate allies are manipulating an official investigation to smear Biden. His intelligence officials are refusing verbal briefings to Congress on foreign election interference, which Trump invited. He has openly telegraphed his intention to use mail delays to get countless votes against him invalidated.

Trump’s convention explicitly advertised his corruption, lawbreaking and willingness to cheat in the election alongside his law-and-order appeals. He is now openly encouraging extralegal violence – that is, political violence – in the name of those appeals.

Donald Trump has established a pattern throughout his presidency – demonization of his opponents, accusations of criminality against them, threats to lock them up, all the while breaking very clear laws that are meant to limit his own power, resting in the assurance that the Republican Senate will never hold him accountable. Sargent concludes:

Trump is not the “law and order” candidate. He’s the candidate of arbitrary violence, state and private alike. He is the candidate of lawlessness and civil breakdown.

Donald Trump no more represents the rule of law than the person throwing a Molotov cocktail. He just has more power – for the time being.

God Is Not on Our Side

In the book of Joshua, just before Joshua sacks the city of Jericho, he receives what many interpret as a visitation from God. This encounter can teach us something, especially since Joshua is about to commit one of history’s most storied acts of destruction at Jericho. The people inside the city could be forgiven for assuming that the gods are on their side – property rights, law and order, that sort of thing. It’s their city, after all.

Joshua could be forgiven for assuming that God is on his side, since God ultimately destroys the walls and gives the city into Joshua’s hands. But we learn something deeper about God, just before Joshua launches his attack:

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.[8]

God was on neither side. The question for Joshua would always be, from then on, whether he was on God’s side. Even though God delivered Jericho into Joshua’s hands, Joshua could never make the leap and presume upon God’s loyalty to the “team.”

Conservative Christians in America have taken God for granted for too long. It’s one thing to conclude, as I have, that attempting to protect the lives of the unborn through legal means is a worthy cause. But after almost fifty years of that debate, many Christians have become grossly, embarrassingly arrogant about the rightness of our cause, as though all the Gospel and all Christian morality and ethics can be boiled down into whether one votes for a “pro-life” candidate – even one as fraudulent as this president. The one blessing of the pandemic lockdown is that I have a more ready excuse to avoid spending time with Christians who’ve become so pretentious as to believe that God is on our side, no matter what. That kind of thinking paves the way for a Donald Trump to capture our movement by saying whatever he’s taught to say about abortion. We’re witnessing an utter breakdown in society, now, because of our pride and foolishness in empowering this cultural vandal, believing God smiled on that decision.

Too many conservative Christians now fall for the easy narrative about the racial unrest – the one that casts protesters into the same mold as the very small number who riot and commit crimes, and we assume they are against God’s good and peaceful ordering of society. Once again, we’re choosing the side of the oppressor, thinking we’re serving God.

Too many Christians assume Jesus shares our penchant for order and obedience and authority in all circumstances. We can make a good biblical case for each of those concepts, but not as the ultimate good to which Christians aspire. They’re entry-level, foundational Christian beliefs, and we teach them to our children because they help things to go well.

But God didn’t create us because he needed some people to keep in line.

It’s not my goal, and I hope it’s not yours, to get through life in such a manner that my tombstone will say, “Nice guy. Stayed in his lane. Obeyed authority.” What a waste of a life that would be, if I “stayed in my lane” while just down the road from me, my brothers and sisters experienced abuse at the hands of the very authorities I obeyed.

I encourage anyone who thinks that God is on the side of law and order at the expense of justice for the oppressed to open their Bible to any of the Old Testament prophets, or to any of Jesus’ words, for that matter.

The book of Amos perfectly captures how I think God views the comfortable white Christianity of 2020 America. Amos prophesies against God’s people, warning them about ignoring the poor as they set themselves up in their safe citadels, living off a system of oppression that’s almost invisible to them. They thought they were doing God’s will, but their self-focus prevented them from seeing all the people who were being harmed while they secured their place of privilege. How can we square the priorities of “Make America Great Again” politics with these sorts of words from Amos?

There are those who hate the one
who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.

You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.[9]

But oh, Amos’ audience was proud. They performed their religious observances. Whatever the hot-button “abortion” issues of their day were – the ones they thought would so clearly separate the good people from the bad – they made sure to be on the right side. They were the “good” people.

I think of them often when I hear prosperous American Christians talk about wanting to see the return of Christ. It’s as though we don’t realize that the return of Christ is a hopeful day for the very people who’ve been under our thumb for centuries. The return of Christ is good news for a family who made the dangerous trek from Guatemala to seek asylum in the arms of the U.S., only to be abused at the hands of our government so Donald Trump can win votes from his white evangelical base.

Many believers have become so morally illiterate that we reduce salvation down to whether we said the sinner’s prayer, and then just get on with trying to build our best life now. We can look at people demonstrating in the streets for justice and fail to realize that they are the ones God is siding with, through Amos, when he says to his own people:

Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?[10]

I won’t make definitive claims about who’s side God is on in these days, but if he returns tonight, I’d much rather be a poor black kid defacing a building as an expression of anger and frustration than someone like…myself, who lives in comfort and only dips into these issues when I feel like I can fit it into my schedule.

Please don’t let Donald Trump pick your side. These issues are too important for division and demagoguery. Donald Trump and his new brand of sado-populist Republican have raised demonizing the opposition to an art form, and they’ve used that demonization to excuse any sorts of tactics they decide to use. It’s as though they’re telling their followers, “If you’re fighting the devil, anything goes.”

But they’re not fighting the devil. They’re fighting real human beings, fellow Americans who love their country, who love their families, and who may have a differing view about the role and size of government in society, or about the relationship between one’s religious faith and the government.

No matter how misled we may believe our opponents to be, the Bible doesn’t allow believers to fight our enemies using the devil’s tactics. And when we self-righteously assume that God is on our side, we begin to excuse behaviors in ourselves and our leaders that we ought never justify.

“Othering” the Victim

Sometimes we see something tragic and our fallen human nature looks for extenuating circumstances, to dull the psychic impact of what we’ve witnessed. Was the $20 bill that George Floyd passed, in fact, counterfeit? Was Mr. Floyd, in fact, on drugs at the time of his death? How much did he struggle getting into the squad car? These things shouldn’t matter – none of them merit the death penalty. But in our brokenness, we have trouble comprehending the horror of what we see with our own eyes, and this makes us susceptible to those who offer us a less painful interpretation than the clear meaning of the event we witnessed. Blaming the victim is one of the oldest methods known to humankind for coping with the pain of living in a sometimes-brutal world.

Case in point – the officer who shot Philando Castile was tried for second degree manslaughter. In announcing the charges, the County Attorney stated these facts:

- “Philando Castile was not resisting or fleeing.”

- “There was absolutely no criminal intent exhibited by him throughout this encounter.”

- “He was respectful and compliant based upon the instructions and orders he was given.”

- “He volunteered in good faith that he had a firearm – beyond what the law requires.”

- “He emphatically stated that he wasn’t pulling it out.”

- “His movement was restricted by his own seat belt.”

- “He was accompanied, in his vehicle, by a woman and a young child.”

- “Philando Castile did not exhibit any intent, nor did he have any reason, to shoot Officer Yanez.”

- “In fact, his dying words were in protest that he wasn’t reaching for his gun.”[11]

Yet the search for extenuating circumstances still entered the trial, as it always seems to do. Mr. Castile’s marijuana use became an issue at the trial. According to a police interview with the officer and his attorneys, the officer felt that Castile’s marijuana use put the young girl in the car at risk:

“I thought, I was gonna die, and I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five-year-old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing, then what, what care does he give about me?” The victim’s previous marijuana use later became a focus of the defense, with a mason jar containing a small amount having been found in the car.

The officer was found not guilty. I make no judgements about the verdict, because I know these cases are difficult to decide in a courtroom, but I share this story to show how our efforts to make the victim appear sinister are baked into our system.

On a larger scale, we must be careful not to fall for the subtle (and sometimes not subtle) “Othering” that the president and his allies attempt to perform on victims of oppression. Migrants who come to our southern border seeking asylum come to mind.

It’s one thing to sit on a jury and make the difficult decision, beyond a reasonable doubt and based on the existing laws, whether an officer deserves conviction for a specific offense. But can we dispense with the excuses I hear from many of my friends, whether it’s about George Floyd or, more recently, Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times in the back at point blank range by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin? I keep hearing unsavory details about these men’s lives, usually spread by Fox News or other right-wing media outlets, as though anything can justify what we saw happen to each of them.

My Twitter friend, @TheValuesVoter, recently wrote:

I’ve never been in trouble for anything in my entire life. I have respect for law enforcement and I also show kindness toward all people. But I know that if I were ever shot, by the government or by a white civilian, there are many who would automatically assume it was my fault.

I’ve seen this movie enough times now. It wouldn’t matter if I was minding my business and not breaking any law. Or if I was walking in my own neighborhood. Any competent defense attorney representing the person who shot me would aim straight for the unspoken biases many have.

I would instantly be transformed from being the dad who never did anything to anybody to the scary black man. The guy who made some upstanding white person (regardless of that person’s history) fear for their life and shoot me as a last resort. I know it and most of you know it.

And once the Tucker Carlsons of the world caught a whiff of the story, I would then be painted to be even scarier. Even if it has nothing to do with the incident at hand. Maybe I had an argument with someone years ago. Some aspect of my life would be painted to make me scarier.

And, because there are enough people in the population who, whether they’d openly admit it or not, don’t see me as a fellow human worthy of respect and whose life is just as important as theirs, the person who shot me might skate. He looks like some juror’s relative.

I don’t worry all that much about this happening to me. But every black person worries about it happening to our kids. We have a sickness in our society and our national psyche that has never been healed. And a lot of people who make a living by exploiting it.

Burn It All Down?

I often hear people subtly mock those who “burn down their own communities.” For the sake of argument, let’s agree that this happens, occasionally. We know that the destruction often happens at the hands of people who come in from outside the community, for reasons all their own. But let’s stipulate that at least some of the destruction we witness is carried out by people who live in the very neighborhoods that are being destroyed.

Why might they do that?

I won’t go far down this road, because it’s not my story to tell. But I want to talk about one explanation that I’ve heard that makes sense. I’ve heard people say that the reason they’re tempted to vandalize their own neighborhood is that even though it’s where they live, they don’t own it. And they have little hope of owning it, given the way the system is stacked against them. They feel powerless to change their situation, so when something especially egregious happens, a small minority of them allow their rage to boil over, and they decide to “burn it all down.”

I don’t agree with that decision, but I must acknowledge that I’ve never experienced the sorts of things in my life that would lead me to feel that sort of rage.

But here’s the thing: I’m going to write that paragraph again, but this time, read it as though I’m talking about the people who gave Donald Trump his surprising victory in 2016: the coal miners who saw their livelihoods threatened, who felt abandoned by the Democrats as their former party shifted toward the “cultural elites” who talked more about divisive social issues than helping the people whose jobs were being sacrificed to the “green” economy. Imagine I’m writing about simple church-going folk who witness their values being trashed in the media and written out of the law. As much as I, personally, do not believe Christians were designed to pull the levers of power in the culture, I do understand how rapid those cultural shifts feel to my own people. I was paid, for decades, to think and talk about these things. I can’t look down on people who need more time to adjust to their loss of cultural power – to adjust to the idea that maybe it’s not God’s will that they bring about his kingdom through political means.

So let’s look at that paragraph again, considering Trump’s base, this time:

I’ve heard people say that the reason they’re tempted to vandalize their own neighborhood (or political system) is that even though it’s where they live, they don’t own it. And they have little hope of owning it, given the way the system is stacked against them. They feel powerless to change their situation, so when something especially egregious happens, a small minority of them allow their rage to boil over, and they decide to “burn it all down.”

Many Trump voters feel an inner rage all their own, which is why talk of systemic racism can infuriate them. Understandably, they look at their own lives and see how hard they’ve had to work just to survive, and they don’t remember anyone giving them a handout. In fact, they may feel invisible to their own former party, as all the attention goes to righting the injustices that minority communities have experienced. I can understand how some of Trump’s voters would look at the wealthy suburbanites who are beginning to awaken, slowly, to issues of systemic racism in our country, and say, “That’s fine for you – that system benefitted you. You’ve got yours. What about me?”

I’m not justifying or criticizing those thoughts and emotions. I’m only validating them and trying to understand them.

But Donald Trump exploits them.

The Vandal in Chief

Donald Trump and his supporters often rail against “identity politics.” They make fun of “social justice warriors.” But they practice their own kind of identity politics, with a vengeance.

Donald Trump is president because of white identity politics, especially white evangelical identity politics. He understood his base in 2016. He knew that if he focused on the issues they cared about, and spent every hour of every day in the campaign magnifying their sense of grievance, they would stop viewing him as a New York elite who never worked an honest day in his life, and instead see him as a powerful fighter on their behalf, who would force his way into the system that was rigged against them and obliterate it.

The problem is, he’s not doing it on their behalf. The people who elected him don’t benefit, materially, from his destruction of our systems. He does. He wants to be Vladimir Putin, and he’s well on his way. Every authoritarian leader knows that, in order to take over a democracy, they must undermine all the systems of government that would hold them in check. In order to do so, they must cultivate a base of support who will stand by them no matter what.

That’s not something Christians can be a part of.

Donald Trump is an existential threat to America – to all our principles that generations died for. He’s the Vandal in Chief, breaking the laws and norms that we’ve established over centuries. He might win, and if he does, he will be unrestrained and beholden to no one.

It’s difficult to talk about this, because the examples are so numerous and cover so many categories of damage to our society that any quick summary, in passing, minimizes just how much trouble we’re in. This is another authoritarian tactic – to wage such an assault on the institutions of society that no one can keep up.

You Don’t Miss It Until It’s Gone

I understand that some of the people who put Donald Trump in office are glad he’s burning it all down. They never owned it, anyway. It never worked for them. Let it burn.

Except…

I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that my neighborhood might never get another bank within walking distance. If we do, it’ll be a long time coming. (Fact check: As of today, five years later, the bank has not been replaced.) Those gas stations may never return, or the pharmacy. I may never see the friendly people again who ran a couple of the restaurants I loved. Part of the infrastructure that holds our community together has been destroyed for the foreseeable future, because a few of us let our rage carry the day. Burning down our own community has consequences.

What will the United States look like once Donald Trump has successfully burned down, for instance, the separation of powers, as he illegally continues to override Congress’ power of the purse to build his border wall. What will we look like once he finishes burning down congressional oversight, by denying every request they’ve made for documents and witnesses as they seek to do their job of holding the Chief Executive accountable? Will we miss having a Justice Department that operates independent of the presidency, as Attorney General William Barr continues to act as the president’s personal defense attorney? Who will investigate corruption now that this president has established that he can fire any Inspector General who dares to investigate him? Will we ever be able to trust that our president is not beholden to foreign adversaries, now that the intelligence community has been sidelined? Will any whistleblower ever come forward again, now that we know the president cannot be held accountable for firing them and vilifying them before hundreds of millions of people? I could go on and on.

Burning down the neighborhood might feel good in the moment, but some things can’t be rebuilt.

My appeal is to Christians – to those who understand that we’re created for shalom. We must do better. We dare not debase our conscience, knowing what we now know about this president. We dare not enable him, through our votes, to vandalize our nation’s shalom for four more years.

We may have nothing left if we do.

---

[1] Isaiah 59:11-15

[2] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. “Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin.” 1995, Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p.10

[3] Plantinga, p.16

[4] Michael Gerson, “It’s Obscene to Focus on How Violence Affects the Vote. But It’s Our Reality.” August 31, 2020, The Washington Post

[5] Jonathan V. Last, “Donald Trump Is an Arsonist Pretending to Be a Fireman: Don’t Be Fooled.” August 6, 2019, The Bulwark, thebulwark.com/donald-trump-is-an-arsonist-pretending-to-be-a-fireman/

[6] Evan Hill, et al, “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody.” The New York Times, May 31, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html

[7] “Shooting of Philando Castile.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Shooting_of_Philando_Castile

[8] Joshua 5:13-15

[9] Amos 5:10-13

[10] Amos 5:18-20

[11] “Shooting of Philando Castile.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Shooting_of_Philando_Castile