Foolish v Evil

I actually agree that no longer making new pennies is a good idea.  Surely we can afford to round to the nearest five cents if we are still pay cash, right?  

But almost five months in, and that's just about where my agreement with the President ends.  Dimwit Donnie 2.0 has been a greater disaster than we could ever have imagined...if the first one was bad but we could recover from him, this one means the end of our country unless he is vanquished soon.  

I find it of interest the manner by which we are to think of his reign.  Is he evil, or merely foolish?  So many things I've seen so far are just plain dumb.  Hey, let's call it the Gulf of America!  I'm the new chief of the Kennedy Center!  And hey, let's bulldoze the rose garden so I can have a series of statues of people I really don't know anything about beyond hearing their names back in 8th grade but it seems kinda sorta patriotic so why not?  

Foolish behavior was the mark of Trump 1.0.  But having gotten away from being held accountable for his past crimes and felonies has emboldened him, and a lot of the things that he is doing are just plain evil.  Even something like the tariffs, which I though at first were just a sign of his stupidity as he raised and lowered them on a whim, are likely acts of evil.  Knowing enough about how the stock and bond markets work, it's pretty clear that even little acts like placing a tariff can drastically altar a stock.  Jerking them around, and giving your friends (though he likely has no friends, only supporters) a heads up that such things are happening, means that they get to profit off what he is doing.  Some of the direct conflicts of interest, such as hiking up tariffs from Vietnam while his family forces a new resort into the country, are just criminal.  

But one doesn't even have to look too closely before you see open corruption and wickedness.  The billions he has made off of $Trumpcoin.  The $40 million he gets for selling a documentary about his (estranged) wife to Amazon that nobody but their worshippers will watch.  The way he has shipped off certain 'undesirables' without any due process to foreign prisons, even as the courts are demanding that they be returned.  His gutting of federal aid programs as he seeks in his big and beautiful way to get massive tax cuts for billionaires.  How he has sold pardons to his supporters and given over 1600 other criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card for their actions on January 6.  

I could go on, but it gets depressing to keep recounting all the things this man has done.  He's a fool, but he's an evil fool.  Lord, forgive us.  We have had enough of retribution.  Deliver us from evil.

Three Dark Ones

I'm in my quiet season of being down to one job, so I've been catching up on some shows and movies that have been building up in my queue.  While I'm more of a series guy at this point, I decided to knock out the three Max movies I'd been wanting to watch.  

Last night I watched Mickey 17.  It's about a worker in space named Mickey, an expendable type who can continually die and then be 're-printed' as many times as needed.  Mickey 17 nearly dies after a terrible fall, and since it's assumed that he died, on his way back to the ship Mickey 18 takes his place.  All along the way a egomaniacal ex-congressman who is leading the space expedition/religious cult wants to destroy the mostly friendly inhabitants of the planet at which they have arrived.  In the end Mickey 18 blows him and the blowhard up and everyone lives happily ever after.

Today I endured the Brutalist, a brutal 3+ hour movie about a Hungarian architect trying to rebuild his life in the United States.  Actually I only made it through the first two hours before I started skipping ahead, but I got the gist, that our hero gets raped by his boss, becomes a heroin addict, and watches his wife suffer before he finds international success and is celebrated in old age by a Holocaust-surviving niece who was once mute but then kinda regains her voice.  

The final movie this evening was a brand-new release, Mountainhead.  Four tech bros, with real-life counterparts like Elon Musk and Jeff Zuckerburg the most obvious, go for a boys' weekend at the poorest one's new Utah ski mansion.  Along the way the world is melting down because of the deepfakes made possible one of them, they have lots of bad quasi-philosophical discussions about how to creats coups to overthrow the government and push us towards a post-human life before deciding that such things are too much trouble, and the one with the slightest bit of a conscience about what they are doing is almost murdered by the other three.  The four survive the weekend, the world seems to regain a sense of balance, and they go back to their crappy and self-important lives.  

Whatever the quality of movies these were, I'm always a bit of a believer that movies reflect a lot about the world in which we live.  Maybe it's just me and what I watch (very possible), but it seems quite possible that these movies are so dark because we live in a dark time.  I'm starting to think that we have never really recovered from COVID, that maybe the final symptom of that disease was not something physical but something very social.  We are paranoid, angry, and for all the talk from the pseudo-religious right, we really don't like people much at all.  Maybe going into quarantine zapped out of us the social skills we'd taken generations to build.  Maybe coming out of quarantine was never a great idea, that perhaps we should have simply loaded our souls into the matrix and found a way to stay there.  

I think I do better with shorter shows.  Maybe the White Lotus or Veep or Stranger Things has its own form of darkness, but at least 45 minutes doesn't affect me nearly as long as 2+ hours of troublesome thoughts.  

Trump, Carter, and proper sentencing guidelines

Today was a national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, who was president of our fair country in my very young days.  I remember him not being a good president, a man perhaps in a bit over his head, a man whose inability to fix the problems he inherited led to the Reagan Revolution.  His later years showed a man of character, a man who chose not to pursue the almighty dollar after his presidency, a man who taught Sunday school and modeled the idea of a humble faith and service to God.  

Compare our mourning with a spectacle that will soon take place: Tomorrow will also be a national day of mourning, as our soon-to-be president will be sentenced for 34 felonies in a court of law.  There should be many more than these for which he is convicted, but a friendly Supreme Court as well as a system which favors convicts over righteousness has ensured that he will never face justice for some of the greater evils which he has done.  

By all accounts, his felonies for falsifying business records in order to cover up payments to a porn star (wow) will not land him any jail time or any real consequences for his actions, but that it will be entered into the record that yes, he is a felon, gives me at least the slightest bit of satisfaction.  Short of prison time, though, I've been wondering what the good judge might well make Convict Trump endure.  Some suggestions:

-An ankle monitoring bracelet.  Let him forever be tracked.

-House arrest not in some golf club but in shared duplex with three other convicts, all sharing a bathroom.  

-40 hours of community service.  Put him in a borrowed jumpsuit picking up trash along the side of the road with armed prison guards standing by with shotguns in their hands while the cameras roll.  I'd watch every moment.  

-Twice-monthly check-ins with an overworked parole officer.  Said parole officer continually hounds him about his activities and questions him about the company he keeps.  

-Mandatory attendance at an old-fashioned 'Scared Straight' meeting in which he is yelled at and threatened by real convicts.  

How on earth we have devolved in my lifetime from the election of a decent man like Jimmy Carter to the coronation of a horrible pagan criminal like Donald Trump will haunt me for the rest of my life.  

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools, a Cirriculum Discussion Guide

There's been a lot of talk recently about certain states wanting to introduce the Bible into school cirriculums.  I grew up in Oklahoma, and the state superintendent of schools has decreed that Bibles (originally the New King James Bible, endorsed by none other than the current President-Election and also including the Constitution and Declaration of Independence) be placed in classrooms and instruction be offered about said Bibles.  This has caused a lot of angst amongst those in our increasingly post-Christendom world because of the demand for separation of church and state; it's also brought angst amongst even many Christians because what happens if little Timmy is told by his atheist teacher that everything in the Bible is just a pious fairy tale?  

I've never taught in schools and have no idea how to organize a cirriculum program, but as one who has two graduate degrees in religion as well as almost 30 years of church ministry, I thought I'd take a shot in putting together a discussion guide for schools about various topics on a middle-to-high school level.  It's not all-inclusive, of course, but there's a few Biblical items that demand discussion and I'm certain wouldn't cause any problem for my more conservative friends.  

Wealth and Prosperity.  

-Jesus of Nazareth tells a rich man to sell all he has and give to the poor (cf. Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22, Matthew 19:21).  Questions for class discussion: If we think of ourselves as a Christian nation, how best do we enact this as government policy?  What is the proper upper wage to begin mandatory enforcement of this Biblical rule? 

Foreigners

-The laws of the Old Testament continually speak of the need to love the sojourners (foreigners).  They must not be oppressed (Exodus 22:21), they must be loved (Deuteronomy 10:19), and as workers they must be fairly treated (Deuteronomy 24:14).  Questions for class discussion: How do we properly respond to political leaders who call all sojourners amongst us 'vermin', demand their deportation, and spread rumors about how they eat common house pets?  

Divorce

-Marriage and divorce are common social problems today, and were known by Jesus and his disciples.  Jesus was very strict about divoce, going so far as to say that to divorce a spouse and remarry is adultery (cf. Mark 10:11-12).  Questions for class discussion: What should we do with political leaders who have broken these commands?  Would it be possible to remove them from public office, especially if they have broken these commands multiple times?  

Sexual Assault (for high school honors classes only!)

-Deuteronomy 22:25-29 speaks to two instances of sexual assault; one outcome has the rapist put to death, while the other has the rapist responsible for the financial and social well-being of his victim the rest of his life.  Questions for class discussion: Given that many of our national leaders have been proven in court or in ethics investigations to be pedophiles, guilty of sexual assault, or simply horrible past behavior, how best should we follow clear Biblical teaching about them?  Should we kill them publicly as an example of our righteousness?  Or should it be more privately done to reduce their families' guilt?  Give clear reasoning for your answer.  

------

I have no doubt that the God-honoring, Bible thumping conservatives in our country will be all in favor of my cirriculum, so once it begins being implemented I'll work on the other topics.  But for now this should keep everyone busy...

Why Trump Won

Donald Trump is returning to the White House.  As I write this he is about 4 million ahead in the popular vote, and in the electoral college he won every swing state.  The Senate will have the GOP with a decent-sized margin, and the House looks like it might be red as well.  

A lot of us are stunned and angry.  A lot have created negative answers about the losers in this race: 'The Democrats are incompetent.'  Yep.  'People are tired of liberal wokeness'.  Ok.  'Joe Biden waited too long to not run.'  Agreed.  'Kamala Harris was a bad candidate.'  Not sure about that, but I can see how some think it.  'America won't vote for a woman.'  Likely.  'Inflation and housing costs have made Americans mad.'  Sure, but Biden inherited Trump's Trainwreck of an economy and was fixing it.  'Nations around the world in recent elections have been casting out the incumbents.'  Absolutely.  'Josh Shapiro should have been VP instead of Tim Walz.'  Whatever.

I won't get into the positive answers some are spouting about the greatness of Donald Trump and how he is rightfully coming back to his proper throne, because I don't want to break my computer.  I'm guessing that many people voted for him for that reason, even as many more were simply anti-democrat, anti-incumbent, anti-Harris and voted for him while holding their nose.  

But most of the talk I have heard has not gotten to the real point: the United States of America is a morally and spiritually bankrupt country.  The leaders for whom we vote are in many ways expressions of who we are.  If we vote for a person who is corrupt, immoral, and idolatrous, what does that say about us as a nation?  

This summer I finished 25 years of full-time preaching.  I have become increasingly convinced that one of the primary themes of Scripture is the Kingdom of God.  I'm not the first person who knows this, of course, but I do think that the church has become increasingly heretical by forgetting about the Kingdom.  We have a God who reigns, and we are his subjects.  And if we know that Jesus is Lord, what does that demand about us as his people?  In recent weeks I have seen a lot of 'Jesus is my King, and Trump is my president' flags.  I really want to ask the people who fly them what they mean by that, because Donald Trump is the antithesis of Jesus Christ.  If Jesus is his king, I'm guessing that Donald Trump is not his wingman. 

Of course, there's one other point that may be more troubling than anything.  What if God is returning Donald Trump as a punishment upon us?  We talk of being one nation under God, and Donald Trump has loudly boasted to his supporters that 'I am your retribution.'  What if this is true, that God is choosing to punish us as a nation by giving us such a wicked and immoral man as a leader?  What if he really is the object through which God is bringing about retribution, even as he doesn't even know this?

I have no hope that the next four years are going to go well for our country or the bigger world around us.  Likely NATO will crumble, and Ukraine (and other eastern European countries) will fall because we abandon them.  The middle east will continue to be a fiasco.  RFK Jr. in charge of health means that public health programs will be greatly hindered.  Raising tariffs and lopping off the bottom of the workforce through mass deportations (who do you think builds houses, works in slaughterhouses, and picks labor-intensive crops?) will drive up prices to the point that we will crave 2022 inflation.  Our hatred of migrants will be a dark stain upon us for generations as the best and brightest will no longer feel safe in coming here.  

I said during his first presidency that it might take a decade or more to undo the damage he does to our country, even with good leadership.  I'm not sure that we will recover from his return this time.  Could it be that God has finally lost patience with us?  For years I have heard his supporters think of Trump as a new 'Cyrus', God's chosen instrument (cf. Isaiah 44:23-45:1).  On the one hand I was happy to see that they recognized him as the pagan that he is.  But I think that their Biblical identification of Trump is wrong.  He is much more likely Belshazzar, the foolish king who partied hearty and found destruction the next day (cf. Daniel 5).    

I have seen signs all over for years that speaks of America's need to repent.  While I would likely disagree with the ones putting up as to the reasons we need to repent, I do think that turning back to the God of the Bible and the Jesus of the gospels is our only hope.  Only if we live in the ways of his goodness will we find a way to get out of the black hole we are finding ourselves entering into.