Abishag the Shunammite, 3000 years later (pt. 2)

Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David. And the time that David reigned over Israel was forty years. He reigned seven years in Hebron and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. So Solomon sat on the throne of David his father, and his kingdom was firmly established. Then Adonijah the son of Haggith came to Bathsheba the mother of Solomon. And she said, "Do you come peacefully?" He said, "Peacefully." Then he said, "I have something to say to you." She said, "Speak." He said, "You know that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel fully expected me to reign. However, the kingdom has turned about and become my brother's, for it was his from the LORD. And now I have one request to make of you; do not refuse me." She said to him, "Speak." And he said, "Please ask King Solomon--he will not refuse you--to give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife." Bathsheba said, "Very well; I will speak for you to the king." So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her. Then he sat on his throne and had a seat brought for the king's mother, and she sat on his right. Then she said, "I have one small request to make of you; do not refuse me." And the king said to her, "Make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you." She said, "Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as his wife." King Solomon answered his mother, "And why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also, for he is my older brother, and on his side are Abiathar the priest and Joab the son of Zeruiah." Then King Solomon swore by the LORD, saying, "God do so to me and more also if this word does not cost Adonijah his life! Now therefore as the LORD lives, who has established me and placed me on the throne of David my father, and who has made me a house, as he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death today." So King Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he struck him down, and he died. -1 Kings 2:10-25 ESV

Abishag the Shunammite found herself at a crossroads.  Having seen out the end of her great lord the King, she wondered where the rest of her life might go.  Once upon a time she had found herself in the place of power, fully in control of the world of her lord the King.  All news of the kingdom would be filtered through her, as her role as the Copier meant that his fragile heart would never have to hear about how many of his subjects prayed for his downfall.  Once, he had been a great hero to many; a reality TV star, actor, slumlord, and man about town.  "Perfect and majestic king, you will surely live forever!  Dance with your arms alone, and make the world turn!"  Now, however, his foolishness and incompetence, pushed on by his abject corruption, had turned his people against him.  Sending troops to fight foolish and endless wars based on fantasies he had derived in his head, renaming bodies of water simply to troll his former allies, pilfering his citizens in financial schemes in which he alone made money...his people had had enough.  And so upon his death, some of his people mourned his royal greatness, but most celebrated in the streets drinking strong ales and shooting off fireworks.  

Abishag the Shunammite found herself alone.  How would she provide for herself?  Her once legendary beauty was starting to fade.  The possibility that she would marry the son of the old King had been extinguished when that son foolishly had claimed power for himself and found himself on the wrong end of a sharp sabre upon the command of his younger brother Solomon, known to his pals as the Barron.   She had thrown herself at the new upstart of a king, but sadly he preferred skanky young college girls who were willing to pay exorbitant money for well-named energy drinks.  

Perhaps, Abishag the Shunammite thought, she could make her way much as her old lord had done.  "O lord, your ability to bleed money from others makes me smile."  A friend told her about something called a stablecoal...a perfectly worthless scheme in which she told her friends to buy, buy, buy a lump of coal engraved with a picture on it, and then charged a fee based upon everytime somebody else sold that coal to someone else.  Most of her fellow Israelites realized it was all a scam, even as it had been for the old lord.  But surely there were still gullible people out there.  All she had to do was look for the people still holding onto the past, wearing red turbans that screamed 'Make Israel Great Again!'  You could usually identify those people by seeing chariots propped up on wooden logs in front of their rundown huts, unable to actually go anywhere.  Many of them sat on barren patches of ground and screamed insults against their fellow Israelites...surely, they still believed the old lies.  These fools and their money should be easy pickings.  

But there had to be more, Abishag the Shunammite thought.  Even though she had no discernible skills beyond the ability to fawn over old men, Abishag the Shunammite would make her way.  Perhaps she needed to expand her view even further outward.  Surely there were old kings and tyrants amongst the nations who needed a woman like herself to fawn over them as well!  Even though her looks were fading, her skills at telling shallow men the lies that they wanted to hear were as strong as ever.  "Vladimir, I was a fool for not coming to you for so long.  Your shirtless rides on stallions have brought me ecstatic joy.  I will now serve you forever.   There's nobody like you, my beautiful lord!"  

Oh, the skills of Abishag the Shunammite, so ready to serve her own interests above all else!  May she be praised!  

Abishag the Shunammite, 3000 years later (pt. 1)

Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, "Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm." So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not. - 1 Kings 1:1-4 ESV

And Abishag the Shunammite found herself wandering the halls of power.  Once she had been just another bubbly blonde on the local cable TV channel, until the day in which she found herself discovered by the king.  "Oh, I love the King!  He makes my life worth living.  I will follow him all of my days!" was the nightly cry of Abishag the Shunammite.  The king soon hired her away and put her into his service.  Paid a small ransom each month, most of her money went towards making herself attractive to her lord.  "You are my everything" she would write to him in small notes each day.  "You are the greatest king of all time, and will be greater than anybody else that will come, though I cannot imagine the universe continuing without you!"

Day by day Abishag the Shunammite continued to wedge herself into the old king's life.  Her need to be so close to him meant that she would run behind his golf chariot in high heels, and though she was told that there was no room in the limocart taking him back to Mara Slago, she crawled into the trunk to ensure that she could stay near.  "My life was incomplete until I met the King.  Even if I have no other life now, I at least can devote myself to him."  

Her influence continued to increase.  One day while fawning at her lord, she smelled something distasteful.  The old king has pooped his pants right before a important meeting with the Egyptian pharaoh; his constant diet of fried chicken and diet Coke had finally corrupted his digestive system.  How embarrassing, everybody might think.  But Abishag the Shunammite knew that one day this would happen.  In the suitcase she carried around like a sherpa was another wardrobe for the old king.  She quickly pulled him into the bathroom and quickly took off his stained garments.  She wiped the waste from his body, sprayed his body down with Fabreze, and diapered him back up in a matter of moments.  She then dressed him in an identical blue robe with a matching red turban, and got him back to his meeting on time.  "What would the world be without the brilliance of my lord?  I am his willing and faithful slave."

Oh, the goodness of Abishag the Shunammite, so ready to serve the interests of the king!  May she be praised!  

Middle School Pickup Line Dreams

There's an SUV I see leaving the middle school almost everyday.  It's a fully MAGA-approved vehicle, with a bumper sticker for almost every grievance.  The sticker that stands out the most identifies the driver as Christian.  Conservative.  Straight.  It then follows with a question about whether anybody is offended about this.  More than a few of the stickers use a lot of vulgar language about the intelligence of liberals or socialists or whatever else the owner heard about at some Trump rally.  There's also a big sticker with a hot cartoon blonde holding a beer and screaming Trump Woman.  I've seen the driver...definitely not hot.  But my favorite sticker goes something like, "If after the last year of Joe Biden's sh*tshow you still want to hate Trump, you're a f*cking moron."  Since I've seen that on there now for at least the last two years, I'd be curious to get her take on the last 18 months of the Trump administration's accomplishments.  

As I get stopped at the light right behind her in my giant middle school bus I sometimes dream about the trouble I might get in if I should happen to rear end the SUV and destroy all her precious, precious stickers.  The schadenfreude I might get from doing so probably isn't worth the scratches on my bumper or especially the chewing out I might get from my boss.  But most importantly, I'm not going to do this because I suppose we all need to realize that there's still that 38% or so of Americans who still can't see clearly.  Were they wholly cowed at the foolishness they have driven into maybe we'd forget that they they are there, and even here in Red State America the number of red hats and blue Trump flags (with the requisite "F*CK YOUR FEELINGS!" subtitle) seem to have diminished.  But they're still here, and that's important to keep in mind.  

I suppose I am offended, to her delight, at these stickers.  But not how she might imagine: So here's a woman who thinks of herself a Christian.  Probably loves the idea of Christian nationalism.  Thinks that Trumpy and his administration are doing God's work.  Should I see her SUV parked at Wal-Mart, I'd be tempted to put a note on it.  "So, you're a Christian?  Sorry, I didn't realize that the definition of Christianity has changed, whereby crass vulgarity, a delight in ticking people off, and worshipping an orange deity moved to the top of the creed.  Just wondering how on earth you create the 'Biblical' worldview that's shown on the back of your vehicle.  But hey, I'm sure that in your mind you feel assured in your holiness by the hour you spend at church every six weeks or so.  Good job, I'm sure you are creating the fruit of the Spirit everywhere you go, and I'm sure that you're going to be reaching your friends and neighbors for Jesus, even if it's not the Jesus we read about in Scripture.  Again...thumbs up!  Have a blessed day."

I don't know what to think about our country anymore, but the most depressing thing about it is the downfall of the Christian witness everywhere you look.  I used to think that we were about a half-century behind western Europe in our dismantling of a Christian worldview, but I think we've gone down a very different course, thinking we are yet Christian when in fact those things that some count as Christian are completely and wholly unChristian.  Sometimes I see much different bumper stickers with genuine Christian witness, but even then I am increasingly suspicious about how genuine their faith is.  And am I any better?  Does my contempt for my fellow believer show just how far we have all gone wrong?  

Maybe I won't be the one who rams into the SUV.  Traffic has gotten far worse in front of the school, and it would be a cryin' shame for somebody to wreck all that sweet, sweet hatred.

Reflecting Pool Time Machine

Every single day we see new stupidities from the Executive Branch of the United States.  Maybe it's the fact that Trump's peace deal with Iran is now being shown to leave us in a much weaker position than we were before a war that should never have been.  Maybe it's the continued corruption in cryptocurrencies with his kids, or the way we have alienated almost every former ally, or Trump's big beautiful bloodsport UFC fights on the White House lawn, or a thousand other things that we've already forgotten with the flooding of the zone of stupidity.  The Trump trainwreck continues leave death and devastation in its wake.

One of the current stupidities involves Donald J Trump, Builder Genius.  Because he's decided Washington DC might well be a sh*thole city, he's taken it upon himself to clean it up and recreate it in his own image: giant arches, tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build himself a ballroom, spending millions in no-bid contracts with his buddies to re-do the reflecting pool which turns into a beautiful algae green three days after it opens.  In some ways these things on the surface don't actually bug me that much...DC probably did needed to be cleaned up, and run down places like the East Wing probably needed to be replaced.  It's just that the way he does everything, without any sense of that he's not the owner, just a current resident of the city, makes it terrible.  The next president is going to spend the next four years trying to undo so many of the tacky gold-plated monstrosities that he is building that the things that are actually important as President might be neglected.  

As much as I despise Trump, however, part of me still thinks that the Democrats share at least a minority share of the blame.  Even now the approval rating for the Democratic party is STILL worse than Trump's; this is not just a mark that a. people are stupid for still supporting Trump, but b. people really, really, REALLY hate the Democrats.  Why did it have to be this way?  

There are times when I dream of going back in time to early 2023 and seeing a different history being written.  Let me set the scene: A fading Joe Biden calls in the (literal) old guard of the Demoratic party into the Oval Office: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, and a dozen others who have been holding onto to Congressional control for the last two decades.  "Listen", Joe says.  "I'm done.  It's been an honor and a privilege to be President, but it's time for me to go.  And it's time for all of you to go as well.  We need to turn over the party to the next generation.  Stay in Congress if you want, seek to be influential and mentor a new generation, but we make a rule that none of us will be committee chairmen or will run for president.  Maybe we can convince our Republican colleagues to do the same, and so we won't have to ever see Donald Trump again."

That night, President Biden, surrounded by a bunch of these same leaders, goes on national TV and does his best Lyndon Johnson impersonation.  The American people realize that, hey, finally we can move on from the past few years: COVID, January 6, and most of all Trump.  A new generation of Democratic leaders is empowered to step up, the Democrats win against a visibly diminished Trump, the Republican party begins its road back to repentance and sanity, and nothing of the past 17 months actually becomes history.  

Heck, maybe the reflecting pool fix would have been worth it were it a time machine.  I'd brave wading through all that algae if I could change the past year and a half.  But movies ain't real, even as the current dystopia is.  

A Response to 'Salt & Light Resistance'

Recently I became aware of an open letter in our movement of Churches of Christ from a group calling themselves 'Salt & Light Resistance'.  I read the letter and then co-signed what they were saying.  A few days later, I got an email back from them asking why I signed, as this letter had been recognized in our 'national newspaper of record', the Christian Chronicle.  I've spent some time thinking about why I have signed to this letter, yet remained publicly quiet on so many other things, even as I (rarely) voice my frustrations, screaming into the universe, in this blog setting.  So here was my response.  

I co-signed the open letter from Salt & Light Resistance recently, not as a Democrat or Republican, not as a political liberal or conservative, but first and foremost as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.  While not perfect, I believe that the letter does a good job in promoting the values of this Kingdom in opposition to the many things in our nation today that are the very antithesis of the Kingdom.  

I feel compelled to mention, however, that the warnings given in the letter might well not be as strong as they could have been.  One of the most discouraging aspects of the past decade has been found in a consistent 82% of so-called 'evangelical' Christians voting and resolutely supporting President Trump and his MAGA minions.  I would suspect that the numerical percentage of those within Churches of Christ are similar; in other words, about 4 out of 5 of those of us in Churches of Christ who proclaim on Sundays that Jesus is Lord, that we are called to live faithfully before God in all ways, look at President Trump and his actions and believe that they are good and even godly.  To me, this is the sign that we have become a Biblically illiterate people, and that our moral foundations are not only shaken but have withered to the point that they are almost non-existent.

Recently, as part of a political stunt in which the Bible is being read at the White House in honor of our 250th anniversary, President Trump read a passage from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22.  It's a passage of Scripture that speaks to a people who might one day in the future think of themselves as God's people but have in fact lost their way.  In it, the Lord appears to Solomon and speaks of the need for his people to 'humble themselves', to 'pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways'.  I was struck by the gall and arrogance of this president reading such words with a straight face.  Can we ever think of our president, whose intention to build ballrooms for his wealthy benefactors and erect arches to celebrate his 'triumphs' (I use that word laughingly) and imprint his image on statues and passports and monuments and even currency, as being a man who humbles himself?  Can we ever think of our president, who seems to relish rounding up and expelling 'the Other' and blaming them for all of our ills, seeking out the face of the Lord?  Can we ever think of our president, who glories in enriching himself through scams such as cryptocurrency and 'Trump Phone' and quid pro quo arrangements with foreign governments, as ever turning from wicked ways?  

It should not be surprising that we live with such wickedness in the Oval Office; we would do well to re-consider David Lipscomb's warnings about civil government and the way they turn us away from God's Kingdom.  Evil has existed in the highest reaches of political power in every era.  But what has been most painful to me has been watching how so many Christians nod in approval at so many things he has done, or at least want to join in his red-hat cult of personality.  Can we not see that in following his evil we are going down much the same road as our Israelite ancestors?  I have heard many fellow Christians loudly proclaim that they believe God has sent President Trump our way to bless us.  But could it be that God has in fact sent him to curse us and bring destruction upon us?  Romans 1:18-32 reminds us three times that a people who engage in wickedness are given over to their sin; if we are a people who are upset about sexual immorality, why are we supporting a twice-divorced man who has engaged in numerous illicit affairs and has been accused by more than two dozen woman of sexual assault and (perhaps) even dipped his toes into the waters of pedophilia?  If we are a people who want to end malice and deceit, why are we supporting a man who recklessly lies about basic facts and spends several nights each week taking to social media to denounce anybody who will not lick his boots?  If we are a people who get upset about the world's haughtiness and boastfulness, why are we supporting a man who posts pictures of himself as Jesus and demands prizes and honors from anybody and everybody?  In President Trump, it seems to me that God may well have given given American over to the worst of her sins.  

Each week as I plan sermons and classes I try and remember the words of a mentor in my earliest days when I was asked to preach for one of the first times.  His words to me were simple: "Preach the Word!"  I have sought to take to heart those words in the thousands of times I have stood before God's people since.  But in recent years I have found such a disparity between what I read about in God's Word, versus the actions of those people who claim a kind of godliness but deny the very fundamentals of what a life as a Christ-follower looks like, that I am terrified for our nation's future, not to mention the future of the church.  Will we wake up and realize the peril that we are in?  

In closing, I need to say that this summer I am finishing up 31 years of full-time ministry in Churches of Christ.  I have been blessed to work with churches over those years who are made up of people from different walks of life, different political ideologies, and different cultural backgrounds, and I have been blessed that I have never had to endure an open split or even a loud rupture in the local church.  God's people are more resilient than we give them credit for.  But maybe it's now time for me to start becoming more vocal about naming evil for what it is.  To proclaim the Kingdom now also means that we must name those things in every era that stand against it.  

Karma Will Come

The Trump Sh*tshow continues to roll on; after last week's trainwreck of pissing off whatever allies we have left in his aborted play to get Greenland (rationalized by the thought that 'we have to take it over to prevent bad people from taking it over'), this week his hot garbage has been centered in Minnesota.  Yep, those nice people of Minneapolis have risen up in fierce resistance against ICE and border patrol agents who have used gestapo tactics in trying to 'save' white people from their Somali neighbors.  Multiple American citizens doing little more than driving their cars or taking cell phone videos have been murdered by federal agents.  And sure, the Faux News crowd (mostly the same 38% who continually, insanely, continues to support Trump) thinks that it's all paid agitators or radical leftists causing the problems.  But anybody who looks at this through any form of moral lens can see the evil that the government is doing.  Civil War may be on the horizon, as people openly resist and reject the federal government.  

My prayer is that somehow, someway this ends peacefully.  Recently I've become aware of the Latin phrase 'sic semper tyrannis' which basically means 'thus always to tyrants', which is a prayer that what they have put upon others will come back upon them.  Again, I hope this happens peacefully...if we have elections in the fall (a big if), perhaps the Democrats will finally stand up and do something competently, and any Republicans who haven't fully sold their soul to MAGA will finally wake up and reject what has been happening.  Those that for years hung from the back of their pickups giant yellow flags screaming 'Don't Tread on Me!' will finally see the reality that the people doing the treading are themselves.  

And so what will happen to ICE?  If funding for DEI policies and climate (and other) sciences and aid for the poor and so many other programs can be ended, so one day ICE will be dissolved as well.  The day is coming, hopefully sooner rather than later, that all these former Proud Boys who now have legal shielding from their atrocities will be the streets.  And so what will they do?  Some, I hope, will face their crimes in the court system.  A few high profile scapegoats will likely go to jail, as well as a few lower level agents who have done the actual murdering.  But for the rest, my advice would be to hide this job from any resume or job applications, because likely nobody with any sense of conscience will ever hire them again.  Sure, I bet they can get some private army mercenary gig in a third world country...but were I an employer I'd higher a drug-addled layabout before I'd hire an ICE agent.  Yep, the people who brought misery to so many will themselves be subject to misery.  Sic semper tyrannis.  

Funeral Plans

Yesterday we saw the sad murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, likely at the hands of his disturbed son.  Another terrible tragedy, to go with the killings of over a dozen people celebrating Hannukah on Bondi beach in Australia or the murders at Brown or the wars around the globe.  

Of course, President Trump had to make this about himself.  

One of these days Donald Trump is going to choke on a chicken bone or fall down the steps leading to Air Force One or have a massive coronary event.  And when that day comes, there aren't enough fireworks in this world for all the block parties and spontaneous celebrations that will break out in the United States and all around the world.  

Another Grand Week in the Republic

I knew it was coming...it was time to start shopping again for the healthcare marketplace plan for my wife and kids.  I had heard that rates were going up because some of the COVID era subsidies were about to expire.  But I wasn't expecting that they would go up from $376/month to $825/month, more than a doubling.  In some ways I suppose I am lucky, as it might be that the rates have gone up in part because my daughter is working full-time while she's going to school, and my son is working regularly part-time while in high school.  That extra income likely cut my subsidy, but the Big Beautiful Bill this summer that ended the extra subsidies was probably the main reason.  

It's a good thing that my second job offers health care.  For me it's almost nothing, less than a hundred dollars a month, but to add the family is going to jack it up to around $800 a month.  When you add me in, it's still less than what I am doing through the marketplace, but this will likely take out about half of my check.  Again, I am still blessed...we've always tried to think of this extra money as just that, extra.  But likely this will mean that some of the fun things we do with the extra money won't be there.  

I waited at first to go ahead and sign up for the job health plan, because along the way there was an ever-so-slight chance that perhaps the subsidies would be extended.  After all, the Democrats in Congress were refusing to vote YES on a continuing resolution to fund the government, and so said government was shut down for almost 6 weeks as the wanna-be heroes were fighting to return the subsidies to the plans.  Things were looking up for the Dems...last week they won all the hotly contested off-year elections, Trumpy's approval ratings magically slipped below 38% in some cases, and maybe, just maybe, the Republicans would give in.  Nope.  This weekend it came out that 8 of the Democrats finally gave in, giving MAGA the 60 votes they needed to fund the government.  Once again, the Democrats were running the touchdown into the end zone and instead fumbled it back to the Empire.  

Because of the shutdown 42 million Americans who depend on food stamps no longer had access to them.  And while I'm a bit skeptical that many are truly going hungry (my goodness, look at the obesity rates in this country), the gleefulness with which the GOP were ensuring that that extra money wasn't going to poor people was painful to watch.  All along as the shutdown continued, the demolition of the East Wing of the White House also ramped up so that the Trump Ballroom could be built (alongside the renovations of the bathrooms in the Trump living quarters).  Trump wasn't there much of course, because he was having a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago for his rich cronies.  I mean, the same people who think of themselves as pro-life are perfectly content to watch the living suffer, but were we expecting anything different?  It's like they think of that book as aspirational rather than a cautionary tale.  

I suppose if there's one good thing coming out of the re-opening of government is that an Arizona Democratic congresswoman has now been sworn in, and she becomes the last person on the petition necessary to start releasing some of the Epstein files.  And sure enough, today they are starting to pour out.  While what's in there is going to be hard to read except for those who like that kind of stuff, at least light is finally going to be shed on just how good Trump and Epstein have gotten along over the years, and how Trump will once again have to face the revelation that he's a horrible, evil person.  

Of course for his supporters, it won't matter.  The 38% will soon come back roaring to his defense and soon we will move on to ignored scandal #852 (#2611 if you include Trump 45).  Yes, it's more Greatness than you can ever imagine in our fine nation.  

The Anti-Trump algorithim

Because I believe that Donald Trump is a terrible president and an even worse human being, several times a week I will ragegoogle something like 'Trump is a moron' or 'MAGA is code for Nazi'.  I say these things not because I have great confidence in the Democrats or that I am a liberal...but in the end the various algorithms out there regularly put things into my news feed that likely they think I want to hear.  If I was a climate change denier, they would fill my box with opinions that rising seas are good for real estate along the seashore ("It's a seller's market if there's a shrinking amount of oceanview property!")  If I lived my life thinking that all people are stupid and I'd rather hang out with horses, I'd get ads for T-shirts that have majestic horses on them.  But because my online profile is likely as filled with English soccer, 70s yacht rock backstories, technology gadgets and anti-Trump sentiment, I get offered a lot of anti-Trump news.  Lately I've noticed there are three primary avenues.

1)The "Here's how Trump is destroying America and the World!" stories.  I actually agree with many of these stories, even if not everything is as bad as they say.  Not everything depends upon Trump, but it's important to know how he and his minions are destroying efforts for clean energy, equality, and Ameica's place in the world, among a thousand other evil things he is doing.  

2)The "Trump's support is collapsing in the polls!" stories.  These bug me a bit more, because almost always the 38% floor for Trump never seems to get crashed through.  But continually we are told about polls that show that Trump's supporters are finally waking up (nope), that the GOP will lose Congress (not likely), that the Democrats are rallying around ___ (laughable).  Nothing is changing for his acolytes, even as Trump's stupidity is on daily display for anybody paying attention.  

3)In recent weeks I've started to see a handful of "Trump is dying!" stories.  Like the polling numbers, I think that this is mostly wishful thinking, because I don't really think that Trump will die within the next few years.  No matter how obese, frail, or demented he seems, he will receive the best care available within the medical world.  This weekend one of the things that popped up was a wondering header that said, "Trump has no public appearances this weekend!  Could he be receiving a life-saving treatment?"  Doubtful...likely he's playing golf or plotting with advisors about taking away rights from somebody or planning some grift for his sons to take advantage of.  I don't really buy that the bruises on his hands or his swollen ankles or his slurred speech really mean that death is immanent; such things are simply the way of life for many senior Americans who live for years like this.  Modern medicine (something that costs the government a LOT of money!) means that people will live a long time with all sorts of ailments.  Most seniors will spend the last decade of their life going from doctor to doctor as they seek to manage conditions that are products of genetics or age or lifestyle; the only difference with Trump is that he is in a position to have the best practitioners come to him.  Maybe we might get lucky and he'll do more listening to quacks like RFK Jr ("Hey Mr. President, drink this raw milk and don't pay attention to doctors!"), but I doubt it.  If anybody is going to hang on, it's him.  

Maybe I need to change what I google for so that I will have a more balanced newsfeed.  But maybe I'll be like most people today, blissfully believing whatever appears in front of me.  

A few rambling thoughts about my school bus and Dimwit Donnie

This week I began year number ten of driving a school bus.  What began as a side gig a few years ago to make a few bucks has become something I genuinely love to do, and something I will try to continue doing long after I retire from church work.  My middle school kids are usually hilarious, sometimes horrifying...but I am grateful for each one.  My bus may be one of the most culturally and racially diverse groups of people you'll ever find.  About half of my kids are white, while the other half is equally divided into kids of Hispanic, Black, and Asian descent.  There are times whether I wonder whether all of them are 'legal', and I think about the coming day in which some masked ICE thug decides he wants to drag one of them off my bus for the crime of being brought to America, land of the free and home of the brave.  I've come to the realization that I will offer myself up for arrest in their place, not as some moral hero but simply because I'd want somebody else to do for the same for one of my children.  

Tonight I was mowing the yard and I was thinking a lot about how well our Dear Leader might do driving a school bus.  Can you imagine that whiny and thin-skinned dope and how he'd deal with 60 unruly middle schoolers?  They would tear him apart.  10 minutes on a bus with those kids and Trump would be screaming about how he is going to sue them or deport them.  I doubt he could finish a route without them making such fun of him that he runs off the bus crying and saying how unfair everything is.  

Kids can be cruel and mean sometimes...that's what they are, just as that's what we were at that age.  We found the tiniest little thing to get under an authority figure's skin and we just picked and burrowed and poked and prodded until some of them broke.  Many of them, who were not so concerned with letting a 12-year-old determine their self worth, let us run ourselves out, loving us the whole time while slowly teaching us the important lessons of life.  Those who couldn't do these things didn't stay as teachers or youth ministers or anybody who dealt with kids for very long, usually running away screaming after a year or two.  The rest stuck around, grew a pair, and realized that God had put them in this thankless job and so they might as well try to find the humor in it all.

Occasionally I might meet somebody new and when they ask me what I do I tell them that I'm a minister for a small church and a bus driver.  They almost never want to acknowledge the first, but the second thing will usually provoke a response of 'Oh, I could never do that!'.  Yeah, they're right.  They couldn't.  But I would love to see the world's worst egotistical blowhard try.  In his mind he'd be better at it than everybody.  But his failure would be worth almost any price to watch.  

I Am Your Retribution

Recently in my daily Bible reading I read from Psalm 109 I came across these words: 

6 Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is tried, let him come forth guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin! May his days be few; may another take his office! May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow!  May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!  May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!  Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children!  May his posterity be cut off; may his name be blotted out in the second generation!  May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!  Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!  For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.  He loved to curse; let curses come upon him! He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him!  He clothed himself with cursing as his coat; may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones!

This hit home for me, because in my mind in recent weeks I have often thought about something like this for our current president and his adminitration.  The evil of Trump and his basket of deplorables has rarely been matched in the near 250 years of our nation.  It's not simply any one thing...but the cruelty to immigrants, the financial grift, the harm he has done to anything good our nation was doing, the appointment of like-minded depraved individuals...after awhile I cry out, as many do, 'How long, O Lord?  Why do you allow this to happen?'  Shouldn't we as people be taking up arms and removing these people, by force if we have to?  

Yet there's something about the Trump administration that gives me pause...could it be that God has sent him here to bring punishment upon our nation?  Throughout Scripture we find that when God decides to punish people, he often does one of two things.  The first is what we often think about: direct punishment.  Think Sodom and Gomorrah.  Think Herod being struck down and his body eaten by worms.  Think Israel being overrun by their enemies.  Each of these goes back to God directly bringing wrath upon individuals or nations.  

But a second way in which God comes after people is by allowing them to destroy themselves.  I think particularly of the words from Romans 1:18 and following:  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. 

Three times in this passage, following various forms of sin within humanity, God says in effect, 'OK, that's what you want?  I'll give you up to those things.'  In effect, God is allowing people to suffer the consequences of their choices, and such things might well destroy them.  This is not God's desire, of course, but the hope is always that people will repent, call out to God, and turn away from sin.  Only then will God relent from his wrath.  

So...could it be that with the chaos of the past six months we are bearing the fallout of our unrepentant sin?  Think about some things that have defined the United States in recent years: gross materialism, sexual immorality, and self-absorption, to name just three things.  How have we been given over to these things to our destruction?  

We are, by almost any measure, the most powerful economy in human history, all designed to meet any and every human desire.  We dispose of things so quickly because we have so many more (newer! shinier!) things to take their place.  We crave stuff rather than the God who has blessed us in so many ways; this is sometimes called idolatry.  So how might God let us be punished?  Who is the epitome in our nation of wealth?  Could it be a man who loves a gold-plated toilet seat and has gilded the Oval Office?  Could it be a man whose family is grafting milllions of dollars from foreign investors (golf courses, casinos, hotels) by making his own interests more important than the nation's?  Could it be a man whose recent attachment to crypto has caused those trying to get his ears to fill the coffers of his family?  Has not God given us over to the ideal of what we crave by showing us the depravity of its worst excesses?  

We are a nation that has become obsessed with sexuality.  Sure, there are some who gnash their teeth about LGBTQ or various forms of sexual immorality, but look a bit closer and they are no different than anybody else, only seeking to take away the rights that they themselves have.  People define themselves in our modern era by their sexuality, and believe that nobody (not even God) has any right to tell them to temper their desires to any more than what God has authorized.  So how might God let us be punished?  Perhaps by electing a man (with 82 % support of 'evangelical' Christians) who has more divorces in his life than all other presidents combined?  Perhaps by putting into power somebody who has routinely bragged through history of his sexual conquests?  Perhaps by making into the emperor one who is an adjudicated rapist and likely child molester?  Has not Donald Trump become the person that embodies our sexual depravity?  

We are a people who are fully and completely self-absorbed.  While there may be some benefits of the  therapeutic process, the adoption of the navel-gazing mindset in our nation is complete.  Life is about how much I am to be happy.  Get in my way, and I'll destroy you.  I am the center of my own universe.  Rather than think about how we are called to serve our neighbors and love those who aren't quite like us, even many Christians today live with a mindset that is as anti-other and unChristian as those who know nothing about the love of God.  So how might God let us be punished?  Maybe it's by putting in charge of this country the most self-absorbed person of the 21st century, a man-child whose every waking thought is 'how can I gratify every desire I have today?'  Perceived enemies are to be destroyed.  Aliens and strangers are cast out without due process.  The 'other' means nothing to us.  They're 'not like us'.  

Maybe you think I'm going way off the deep end here...maybe we really do need to rise up and destroy these wicked people who do wicked things.  But I think back to just over a year ago when Trump was campaigning, and one thing that he said over and over again to his supporters:  "I am your justice.  I am your retribution."  Could it be that he didn't really know what he was saying, that God was warning us through these words about might well happen if we don't turn from our evil ways?  Could Trump be the retribution upon our nation, the instrument of his divine wrath?  

However you choose to see Trump, his ascension to power for me is a call for our nation to repent...and that's not something I am seeing happening.  His supporters are glorifying him and his wickedness, while his opponents are just infuriated and want to see his downfall.  Few people seem to be seeing this time in history from a spiritual perspective.  Our de-Christianization may well be finding its nadir in the reign of Donald Trump.  

Respect and the Trump Tattoo

Imagine your best friend: a regular guy with a wife, a few kids, and a steady job.  You've known him for years; you love him as a brother; you thank God everyday that he's in your life.  

But let's say he comes to you one day and says he's going to get a tattoo.  Not just any tattoo, but a large one on his face cheeks.  Yogi Bear dunking a basketball over Shaquille O'Neal.  He's wanted to do this for a long time, and he thinks it's a great idea.  

Of course, as a friend you try and talk him out of this crazy idea.  How can this look good?  Is this really how you want to present yourself?  Are you mentally ill?  But your friend is adamant.  He's gonna get this tattoo, and if it costs him your friendship, that's your problem.  He knows who he is, a Yogi-Bear-lovin' hoops fan.  Nobody can stop him.  

He gets the tattoo...and for awhile you still love your friend.  You have gone though enough stuff together that you won't give him up that easily.  But everytime you look at him you see this tattoo...and it really is the very worst thing you've seen, something you can't unsee.  It's not just the idea of a tattoo, but that he chose the worst tattoo artist in the county to get it.  The characters are all wrong, the placement is off-center, and there's not a soul out there who would think that this was done while somebody was sober.  He continually defends the tattoo, of course...if people don't like it, well they are just stupid.  They have been brainwashed by the anti-tattoo lobby.  Only he knows the real value of this art.  

Slowly but surely, over time, you stop hanging out with your friend.  You will always love him, but your respect for him has suffered immensely.  You longingly wait for the day where he comes to you and recognizes that the tattoo was a stupid idea, can you help him find a plastic surgeon to remove it?  But that day never comes.  And you continue to drift apart.  It's hard to respect somebody that delusional.  

----------------

Over the past decade I have had a lot of people in my life who have their own tattoo: the imprinting of Donald Trump on their hearts.  No matter how terrible an idea it is, no matter how badly executed it has been done, they defend their devotion to him with their very being.  Even as you bring up his incompetence, his venality, his corruption, and even his immoral depravity, all things that are so obvious that anybody should be able to see them, it's never Trump's fault.  It's Obama's fault.  It's Democrats.  It's the mainstream media.  It's Hunter Biden's laptop.  It's Hilary's emails.  

Rather than admit the ridiculous nature of the Trump tattoo, they flaunt it and celebrate himwith their red hats, theirs cheap (and quickly dissolved) flags, their Facebook memes, their devotion to a MAGA echo chamber that always points fingers in another direction.  And so they learn to hate windmills, hard-working immigrants, random members of Congress that their lord and savior has decided are the enemy.  There's nothing real about most (if not all) of his grudges, but this doesn't matter...the Trump Tattoo tells them what to think.  

I will continue to love these people as I slowly and depressingly wait for them to wake up from whatever zombie virus they are under.  But I can't really keep respecting them.  When they speak, even as it's not about Trump, I look at them and all I can see is that terrible tattoo on their face.  

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.

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.  

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.  

Folks, We're Screwed

A little more than four months before a third straight election that makes millions of Americans want to put their heads in the oven, and last night they had the first debate.  Joe Biden or Donald Trump.  I didn't watch it, but by all accounts Trump continued his lunatic legacy by spouting lies, and Biden was barely coherent.  

I don't really feel anything about Joe Biden one way or another.  After four years of the Trump Trainwreck, we needed greatness, but we got Mediocre Joe instead.  No matter how much his people keep trying to tell us that he's engaged and laser sharp, we can see with our own eyes that he's a doddering old man who needs to enjoy retirement, not try and run a country. 

Early last year Biden should have found a microphone and said, 'Folks, it's been an honor and a privilege.  I ran back in 2020 in order to kick that orange fraud to the curb, and I did.  Now that we're back on track as a country, I'm gonna retire and turn things over to the younger generation.  I'll be here to help make sure that that nimrod doesn't come back, but I'm not running next year.  Good luck with everything, see you soon.'  

Joe Biden could have wandered off the stage that day and we would have added him to Mt. Rushmore in our thanks.  But that never happened, and the Dems are too clueless to know what to do.  This should have been a slam dunk.  Trump is a criminal with no moral framework and supported by a limited base living in an alternative universe.  All the Dems needed to do was find a governor or senator who was at least somewhat centrist, and they would have won this in a landslide.  The fact that they have no plan in place tells you everything you need to know about them...incompetent, inept, inert. 

As it is, Trump is likely gonna win again this fall.  And when that happens, we really are screwed.  

What's Next

Summer 2023.  Much of the country is locked into a heatwave deathcycle brought on by climate change, or it's just a hot summer.  I don't really know, but it feels like nothing ever seems to change this time of year.  We're just hanging on until the start of the school year, hoping that then we'll be so busy that when the inevitable cooldown happens, we'll not even notice.  

Of course, like the hellish summer we have endured so far we're continually stuck in the cycle of Trump.  He never went away, not even after trying to get his armed acolytes to ransack the halls of Congress because he got his butt kicked in the 2020 election.  The indictments are piling up, the force of law and order are finally breathing down his neck, yet his 38% continues to hang on and glorify his Orangeness.  It's pathetic to be honest, but I don't really fear the man.  I fear what comes next.

A year or two ago I read a book about Mussolini, the awful fascist dictator of Italy who came to power in 1922.  He was a horrible leader but probably not as horrible as he could have been.  Filled with personality and charm, he made some great speeches to bring out the worst in people but seemed to more content to bang a series of mistresses before going home to his overbearing wife every night.  His squad of thugs would beat up dissenting fellow Italians for the sheer pleasure of it and used nationalistic and Catholic fervor to give a voice (and some substance) to antisemitism.  But for his incompetence, he could have been far worse.  

Perhaps one of the biggest legacies about Mussolini was that he was an inspiration for one Adolf Hitler.  Hitler liked Mussolini's style, as well as his fervent nationalism that saw Jews and other minorities as objects belittle, persecute, and eventually destroy.  Eventually he started a world war that led to the death of millions and destroyed his own nation, all because he lived in a world of Aryan resentment that found nothing constructive to create.  

Mussolini was bad, but it took Hitler to take fascism and transform it into a wholly destructive Nazi movement.  It took Hitler's 'competence' (I hate using that word as it sounds like I admire him but it's just descriptive of the effectiveness of his evil ideals) to grow this rage into something beyond a bunch of Angry White People with no outlet.  I wonder if history is repeating itself, not across international boundaries but in the United States itself.  Trump is the Mussolini in this analogy, something of a clown who screams a lot and glorifies himself and talks about the 'greatness' of America...but in fact he's not really serious about anything but his own power.  Just like he never could be bothered to actually march ahead of his minions on January 6th, neither did he really take seriously his power.  He was too busy playing golf and humping a flag and rage-tweeting while watching Fox News to really do all those things he ranted about.  Part of me believes that he never really believes anything he says; he'd parade with the Gay Rights people or feed the homeless if he thought it would be politically advantageous.  His incompetence, always real, found the full force of its might during the COVID pandemic as he mismangaged what could have been a triumphal event of his legacy and blew a winnable election against Mediocre Joe.  And even though he's trying to make a comeback, he's becoming an increasingly old man who even with his 38% is being marginalized for the things he has done through his legal troubles and through a death by a thousand cuts.  One of these days he'll have eaten one too many Big Macs, have a massive heart attack,and he'll be gone.

But my fear is that his movement will be taken over, just like Hitler eventually ursurped Mussolini.  There's already a gang of fools trying to position themselves now to be the Next, people like MTG or Ron DeSantis whose own idiocy makes Trump look reasonable.  These are people who scream and plot and stoke various resentments among people, but they just don't have IT like Trump.  Instead, they're transitional figures, whose weakness amplifies the stupidity of this whole movement rather than strengthen it and make those of us who groan at the thought of the Democrats ultimately vote for them.  One of these days, though, somebody else is going to come along and know what to do with this unruly mob.  The red hat dummies will be organized effectively into a modern version of the brownshirted thugs, who will actually have the discipline and organization to do those things that Trump could only dream of.  

I don't know who that person is going to be, but I'm guessing it's somebody who either we haven't heard of yet or is still totally unknown.  Maybe a Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who leads a state small enough that she isn't well-known except in political circles.  Maybe somebody like Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York who started off as a reasonable republican but quickly turned into a Trump die-hard.  What both of these women have in common is that they are young, attractive, reasonably smart, and likely savvy enough to not tip their hands.  I fear that the Hitler that is to come will be somebody whom we might not expect, somebody young and attractive and seemingly a reasonable alternative to the madness we have seen.  But once they arise and seize their power like Hitler in 1933, their true evil will come out.  And when that happens, this country will really be in some deep s*it.  

Old Preacher's Story, Revised

 A mother knocks on her son's door, then slowly enters.  "It's time to get up!  You've got to get to work."  

"I'm so tired!  I was up half the night watching cable news and talking to all my friends on the Twitter."  

"That doesn't matter.  You have to get up, the morning is half over."

"Well, if I have to get up, can I at least go play golf today?"  

"No!  You have to get to work.  Lots of people are counting on you."

"But mom!  I hate those people.  And half of them hate me.  They talk about how bad I am at my job and how I'm a really terrible person."

"Get out there and prove them wrong then.  Do what's right.  Think about other people besides yourself for once."

"What about what I want?  That's the only thing that really matters!"

"Donald, you are the Presdient of the United States.  Get up, and don't make me come in here again."  

And...scene!

50-A Birthday Wish

I turn 50 this week.  Friends and family ask me what I want, and I don't really need anything...I have a great life, a wonderful family, and all that I really could ever want.  

And so what do I really want you to do for my birthday?  I'll keep this wish simple for any of you who read this:  PLEASE DO NOT VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP.  There, that's it.  I understand that many of you will do so, regardless of what I say.  I'll try not to think less of you for doing such a thing, though it's hard...how can you justify voting for such a terrible person who has been such a terrible president?  I say this as a former Republican who has no desire to become a Democrat, and who is not at all excited about the possible Democratic landslide in November. But that doesn't worry me nearly as much as four more years of Trump.  Better a democratic socialist than a national socialist, I say.  

I have been intentional in recent years in not talking about politics (much) on Facebook.  I don't preach politics (not directly, though all proclamation of the Kingdom of God is inherently political).  I bite my tongue more often than not when I see such blatantly wrong things being said in support of Trumpism.  As a steward of the gospel of Christ, I know that it's so much important to keep relationships peaceful for the sake of the faith than it is to argue about something so stupid.  

But as we come closer to the 2020 election, now only 61 days away, I feel compelled to speak out against President Trump.  This will be the last time before the election I will speak directly on this, and so I need to be concise with my words: one could spend hours, even days, cataloguing the horrible things he has done as president.  But I think his failures can be narrowed down to three broad topics:

1)Corruption, both financial and electoral.  Remember when Trump was going to release his tax returns, like every other presidential candidate does so that we can ensure there are not any direct financial conflicts?  Whoops.  But it's not just about tax returns (which can be just as corrupted and hidden as anything else).  It's about the millions that he gets the government to pay to his properties so that he can golf more than he governs (even as he brags about returning his $400K salary back).  It's about the shady agreements he has made with foreign entities ("I love the Saudis"...they are some of his biggest renters).  It's about how much money his kids and his cronies are making off the family brand name, even as they are quasi-members of the administration. It's awfully hard to drain the swamp when he depends on that swamp to prop him up.  Then there's the way Trump has welcomed the undermining of our democracy by foreign entities, the way he is seeking to suppress voter turnout, and even the fact that he simply cares nothing for those who do not vote for him.  This is why he puts cities against rural areas, why he puts the elderly against the youth, why he puts red states versus blue states.  He knows that if he can just win the electoral college by the tiniest of margins, that's all he really needs to keep his grip on power.  It's unseemly and simply wrong...but that's not the end of the problem.  

2)Competence, or the lack thereof.  Donald Trump is simply bad at his job.  Trumpites will point to the stock market, but like everything else the market is easy to manipulate by the massive deficit spending he has continued to support since he came into office.  Because of many of his economic policies, the long-term economic future of this country is bleak.  He's not the only one at fault, of course...but the same person who wants to take credit for anything good also has to take blame for the bad as well.  And there's a lot of bad things in our country: racial unrest that he continues to stoke, the militarization of law enforcement that has led to many the ongoing protests, massive unemployment and wage disparity, and broken relationship with the closest of our allies while at the same time honoring dictators in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and North Korea.  And that doesn't even get us far into 2020, in which his one of his greatest failures is on display, the COVID-19 pandemic.  Is it Trump's fault that the virus got into the country?  No.  But how he has handled the federal government's response to this is beyond criminal.  Look at how we have responded compared to most other western democracies, where the pandemic is now mostly a nuisance rather than a clear and present danger.  Again, it's not all Trump's fault: hopefully we will have learned the lesson that shutdowns don't stop the pandemic; but his unwillingness to take it seriously for months and devote the resources of government to curbing it (his neo-federalism of telling the states to fend for themselves was based mostly on a.his laziness to attend to detail and b.his desire to stick it to the blue states) has been reprehensible.  For several years I thought that perhaps we would survive with somebody as incompetent as Trump in office, that the bureaucracy (or, as he and his supporters call it, the 'Deep State') developed by leaders from both parties over the years would be sufficient.  But I was wrong...it's amazing how quickly one awful leader can destroy an institution.  I get it...being a president is hard work.  Not many people can do it, I surely can't.  I have no idea whether or not Joe Biden will do well, and wish we had a better option.  But Donald Trump proven that he is not up to the task.  Yet I genuinely believe that his bad job as president is rooted in the deepest problem.  

3)A complete lack of moral character.  For years many of my conservative Christian friends would bemoan the lack of moral character in our presidents...wasn't this the entire case against Bill Clinton?  "We need a godly man in the White House!"  And now, we are left with "God can do great things through a flawed individual."  I've even heard Trump compared to Cyrus, the anointed king from Isaiah 44:28-45:1.  Well, I am glad to see that people see him as a pagan, but in fact they've got the wrong comparison.  A better one might be Belshazzar (Daniel 5), who partied while the empire was crumbling.  Others go so far as to compare Trump to King David, who after all was a murderer and an adulterer.  But the question remains: who does God use in a surprising way?  Continually we find people whose hearts are open to being changed by God, who are penitent of their sins, and who honor God in a genuine way.  None of these  describes Trump, who only uses God as a prop and thinks himself above sin.  Trump is his own god.  As a parent there is nothing about Donald Trump's character that I can commend to my children.  Fathers, would you trust him with your daughers?  Would you trust him to manage your money?  Would you trust him to speak at your church for five minutes without blasphemy being uttered?  Like it or not, political leaders are role models...and if the president continually lies, is unfaithful to their spouse, and is more interested in ratings than he is in righteousness, then I don't feel that he's fit to be president.  

If you have made it this far, thank you, and I promise that I won't do this again before the election.  But it truly breaks my heart to see what Donald Trump has done to this country.  If you have supported Trump in the past, please re-consider as your birthday gift to me.  Trump continually uses the unrest in our country now to say, 'See, this is what a Biden presidency looks like.'  But the neverending unrest and divisiveness is what 3 1/2 years of a Trump presidency have been in reality, and it will only get worse if he is re-elected.  Please, vote this man out.  Thank you.  

Have government and private enterprise traded places?

Agenda item #1 for my Smart People Council to consider: have the roles of government and private enterprise been reversed?  

As we come out of this COVID-19 pandemic, it's been interesting to see how much effort businesses have been undertaking to tell us what they are doing about employee and consumer safety.  Go on to almost any business website (often necessary because in-store purchasing is not always an option), and they'll have a very important announcement telling us what they are doing.  But it's not just about the pandemic...it's about everything now.  Sports leagues continually tell us about what they are doing about racial justice; restaurants for some time have been trying to speak about how they are good neighbors and working hard to reduce their environmental footprint; and many large companies in recent years talk about how they are 'partnering' with good charities like Habitat for Humanity or soup kitchens.  It's almost as if they recognize that they aren't there just to make money, but do good beyond the bottom line.  

On the other hand, consider how our POTUS has tried to downplay the necessity of government to get involved during the pandemic.  It wasn't his responsibility to be a shipping clerk with masks.  It's not the federal government's responsibility to get generators and track the virus (those are state problems!).  And it's not on his watch that hundreds of thousands have died or government has been very slow to do something about these problems...sure, you can blame Obama (3 1/2 years gone), but then any good news about the economy (which is non-existent now) is all because of him.  

It used to be thought that the role of government was to ensure the greater good for all people; it used to be thought that the role of business and private enterprise was to make money.  Now, it seems, everything has changed.  Businesses are taking on (or at least claiming to) many of those roles that were the domain of the public sector, while governments (or at least this government) are stepping back and saying that such things are not their problem.  Doesn't this seem completely mixed up?  

I'm guessing that the obvious answer is that our Trumpite nutjob federal leadership is mostly to blame for this.  For all his minions' belief that he is out there fighting the 'Deep State', he's just really lazy and can't be bothered to do the job of administering the nation.  Too much twittering and golfing needs to get done.  But I do think that private enterprise has in some ways recognized that it is better to do good, and that perhaps is the long-term plan to be more viable in the eyes of a picky consumer public.  Is their desire truly altruistic?  Certainly not.  But even if their motives are not fully pure, at least they are trying to do something, more so than we can say for the federal government, which at its highest levels has turned into a Trump Support group in recent years.  

Once the current POTUS is gone, hopefully in just a few months, I'm wondering if business will get back to normal, and look at profits again.  Perhaps...but I do think that things have shifted, and businesses perhaps are more representative of the needs of society now than a duly-elected government.  What does this say about democracy and where it is going?  Is this a libertarian dream?  

I really don't know...but hopefully smarter people than me can figure this out.