First published 4/29/24
I’ve been engaged in a private email debate with “Earl,” a WND reader, on whether or not Donald Trump qualifies for public office under the biblical standard. Earl is a hardcore Never-Trumper trying to ground his arguments in Scripture – specifically Exodus 18:21, which records the advice given to Moses by his father-in-law Jethro: “Furthermore, select capable men from among the people – God-fearing, trustworthy men who are averse to dishonest gain. Appoint them over the people as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.” He uses this verse in combination with a list of Trump’s flaws and failures and the familiar “lesser of two evils is still an evil” aphorism to make the case that the man is disqualified and we should therefore “Dump Trump.”
At first I thought he might be part of an organized deep-state campaign to undermine Trump support among Christians (something we’re going to see a lot of between now and the election), but after several exchanges I think he’s more likely a lone wolf – in large part because he lacks the analytical and communication skills one would expect from a professional influencer. But he represents at least some part of the conservative base Trump needs to win, and I personally respect every person who tries to engage the culture rather than give up on it, even if I disagree with them, so I think our exchange has educational value for pro-Trump Christians.
Frankly, I think there are better scriptural foundation stones for people with his perspective, but the real problem – a two-fold problem all too common among Christians who venture into political debate and punditry – is 1) the application of an unrealistic quasi-biblical standard for evaluating politicians and candidates, and 2) the practice of applying that standard against only the person they want to spotlight and not the other choices in that specific race and in the history of that office.
It’s a problem that feeds the “lesser of two evils” fallacy because – in reality – no one can meet an overly rigorous standard, so it always works to poison the well against whomever it is applied to. What Christians get by doing this is a very small pool of potential candidates who “qualify” not because they actually meet the standard but because they’re good at hiding their flaws until real-world events expose them – such as in the case of Mike “Benedict Arnold” Pence who fooled all of Christendom until Jan. 6, 2021.
This is what I wrote in my last post to Earl.
“Your error, Earl, is not your conclusion that Trump is flawed but that you’ve singled him out for special scrutiny. When you refuse to name an alternative candidate or politician past or present who passes the same test you’ve imposed on Trump your argument is moot. By the standard you’re measuring Trump against, everyone else is also disqualified for public office if you dig deep enough.
“You know that so you dodge the question. You know that if you offer any real life example of a ‘qualified’ politician or candidate, I’ll expose his flaws and your whole fantasy about earning ourselves a perfect society governed by perfectly righteous men will burst.
“That society won’t exist until the Millennial Kingdom under Christ, because, until then, ‘there is none righteous, no not one’ (Romans 3:10). Only Christ meets the standard, and we Christians do not become perfected in Him – in terms of our behavior as human beings – until glorification. Thus, the meme that I sent shows a picture of Trump and the words: ‘God does not choose perfect men, but men perfect for the job’ is true and 100% proven by Joshua and Judges.
“Because yes, indeed, God IS always true to His word, so YOU must interpret the meaning and principle of Exodus 18:21 by the way God Himself applied it in the specific appointments He made in raising up a long series of seriously flawed men as Judges. Speaking as a lawyer, if you want to know what a lawgiver means in a single-sentence statute, you look at how HE used it in real life. That trumps every contrary theory!”
I’ve long agreed that Trump is clearly America’s modern-day version of an ancient Israelite judge and should be judged by that standard, not the unrealistic evangelical “perfection checklist” that lets mostly the best liars through. And I continually point out that our political arena is – necessarily – a place of compromise, because “We the People” have diverse opinions about what our laws and policies should be. Even those highly principled few who refuse to compromise on some key things must necessarily compromise on others to protect their own priorities. A stalwart pro-lifer like myself would, for example, trade my votes on a spending bill for votes that would protect babies. That’s just the way things work in “government by the consent of the governed.”
If you don’t participate in the process, you have no right to complain, and eventually, like now, you reach a place where the harder-working, less-ethical special interests control enough levers of power to simply impose their will on whomever holds office. That deep-state corruption is what Trump faced in his first term as president and faces again today as a candidate – but in a more potent form. I believe, for example, that Trump was forced to cave to McConnell and the warmongers early in 2017 and hit Syria with missiles for them on the flimsiest of pretexts as the price of a Gorsuch Senate confirmation. I believe his pro-“gay marriage” position is simply an acknowledgment the the LGBT block is too powerful to defeat head-on, so he endorsed the Trojan Horse of “conservative gays” to deflect and distract them. I believe Operation Warp Speed was his only survivable play when Big Pharma and the globalists were setting him up to take a fatal fall for the plandemic. I deplore all of these terrible and harmful compromises, but I understand why he took them and cut him some slack because I’m a political realist.
The sanctity of human life, however, is an entirely different matter for me. In 1990 I was in the front of the crowd at “Unity 90” in Washington, D.C., when Dr. James Dobson made his famous pledge to “never, ever vote for any politician who would kill one innocent unborn baby.” I took that pledge with him, because I recognize that killing a child is the single most evil act of which human beings are capable – and legalizing that infanticide is the most evil public policy that any society can embrace. That’s why I would not vote for staunch pro-abort RFK Jr. despite him being otherwise far better than OBiden.
I highly doubt Donald Trump reads my columns, but if he does, I offer this advice: The solution to the problem of abortion bringing a huge wave of baby-murdering women to the polls this November cannot be a compromise on the sanctity of life itself, or you will set God Himself against you. It is simply, like William Wilberforce on the issue of slavery, to shift focus to the next achievable step on the road to ending all child-killing and make that the topic of public debate. If you unapologetically affirm the sanctity of life and give people a realistic means of incrementally advancing it in public policy, you will demonstrate you are NOT just another politician, but a man worthy of being God’s Judge in His America.
