Will somebody please distinguish between defending the man and voting for him?
In February 2020 BC (Before Covid), columnist David French penned an essay titled, Will Somebody Please Hate My Enemies for Me? In it he argued that Christians who support President Trump and know they are not to hate their enemies are, in defending the president, happy to let him hate their enemies for them. He concluded with, “…by God’s grace, I will love my enemies, and I will not hire anyone to hate them on my behalf.”
I’ve used the same “employment” language in defending my choice to rehire Donald Trump for another four-year term, despite his many flaws, because I believe he better matches the job description implicit in a conservative vision for the country. David French believes that, despite his many conservative policies, his hatred of his enemies should get him fired.
The focus of French’s commentary is not so much on the president but on his “most zealous Christian defenders” who “actively ignore, rationalize, minimize, or deny Trump’s sins.” He charges them with echoing and defending his rude and boorish behavior in defiance of Jesus’s command to love our enemies. In his estimation a vote for Trump is a vote for hate, which is in essence hating by proxy and therefore a sin.
I don’t believe David French has made a good case for firing Trump. Here’s a summary of his argument.
- We can and should love our enemies as we fight for the values we cherish.
- But President Trump hates his enemies.
- And some Christian Trump supporters act just like him.
- Even those who don’t but merely vote for him are sharing in his sin of hate.
- Though they may hate his behavior they mostly disregard, excuse, minimize, or rationalize it and focus on the sins of his opponents and critics instead.
- Even protecting life in the womb does not justify the sin of being complicit in Trump’s hatred.
- Besides, the battle for the lives of the unborn is better fought at the state level and our most effective weapon is love.
- Evangelicals should refuse to choose a candidate “who completely rejects – and even scorns – many of their core moral values.”
So it seems to me the case French has made is actually for our own propensity to hate our enemies, not for firing a president who makes no effort to resist it. If we are sinning in how we think, speak about, or act toward others, we should be called out for it. Likewise, we should call out Trump’s behavior for what it is. But it doesn’t follow that hiring a hater for reasons unrelated to his fleshly failures is thereby participating in his sins.
If I vote for Trump so that he will “hate my enemies for me,” that’s a sin. But even then it doesn’t follow that I should therefore not vote for him. What does follow is that I should recognize my own sin and repent. But that is not why I intend to vote for him again. I pray regularly that God will convict Trump of his many sins and bring him to repentance. I hate that he hates, but I also recognize the temptation to hate in my own heart, and know that such is the condition of every heart…including Joe Biden’s.
In the quote referenced in #8 of my summary above, Mr. French is speaking about Donald Trump. But this is exactly why I and many other Christians will not vote for Biden. He may claim otherwise, but by his words and deeds he has demonstrated to me that he rejects and even scorns many of my core moral values. In particular, the right to life of the unborn.
In addressing the “pro-life —> pro-Trump” argument, French lays out his own pro-life credentials and says, “I’ve never voted for a pro-choice politician, and I don’t ever intend to.” But I’d want to ask, why not? If Christians follow his lead in not voting for Trump, we are in essence voting for a pro-choice president by default. So why not just hold your nose and check D? And if voting for Trump makes me complicit in his immoral personality, how much more complicit would we be in enacting the immoral policies we know a pro-choice president would push through if we contribute to his victory?
My rejection of pro-choice candidates is not only to safeguard and promote pro-life policies. To me, anyone who sanctions allowing the killing of innocent babies throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason is morally bankrupt and cannot be trusted. A wholesale embrace of abortion on demand says so much more about a person’s character than their disregard for the sanctity of life. A pro-choice position is just the tip of the immoral iceberg.
And I’m not defending or excusing Trump’s bad behavior, but assessing his moral suitability for the presidency apart from likewise assessing that of his opponent skews the results. A willingness to belittle and disrespect grown men and women is bad. A willingness to allow dismembering little children is worse.
I respect David French but I am not persuaded by his argument. I still believe we need to distinguish between voting for Donald Trump and defending him – the one doesn’t necessarily follow from the other. And we cannot adequately and in good conscience evaluate the wisdom of giving him another four years in office based on his behavior alone. We must give equal consideration to the alternative.
On the topic of loving one’s enemies, I have a few things to say. Please bear with me, as this might get a bit preachy and vitriolic.
First, while Jesus was loving and kind, He was never once nice. If you stood before Him bearing all your Sin today, He wouldn’t be nice, He would rain down condemnation if you had chosen to spurn His gift of Salvation.
In choosing to love, we must be aware of the fact that Jesus routinely called people out on their wrongdoing, used inflammatory language against those whom He had identified as His enemies, and even went so far as to overturn tables and chase people out of the Temple court with a whip.
Not to be outdone, a careful study of the Acts of the Apostles shows that the Apostolic methods of preaching the Gospel were greeted with anger and violence because they didn’t sugarcoat a thing. Paul was most especially given to being the firebrand who sparked riots through his preaching. Nor did he ever shy away from doing so, even though it led to his own death by beheading.
What’s really funny about this topic is that I’m in the process of studying Systematic Theology, and I’m studying the section on love, especially God’s love. Here is an example of what Vincent Cheung says regarding God’s love,
“A common misconception about God’s love is that it is only a greater version of human fondness and courtesy. This is what many people mean when they claim that they love God – they are fond of him. Now, to the extent that a person has a distorted view of God, this means that he is fond of his misconception of God, so that he is not even fond of God at all. False Christians, or those who claim to be Christians but are not, would turn against God and hate him once they find out what he is truly like. God is the triune deity who judges every thought and intention, demands exclusive worship and obedience, condemns all those he created for damnation, redeems only those he has chosen for salvation, proclaims the Christian faith alone as truth, and does all that he pleases. Such a God is repugnant to non-Christians.”
I first read that quote about an hour ago, and I find it to be rather profound. How it relates to the topic at hand is this. We are commanded to love our enemies, but have lost sight of what that command means. Specifically, we’ve lost sight of what it means to truly love someone, whether it be a stranger, a friend, a spouse, a child, or a sworn enemy.
Our society has become subsumed by the idea that loving someone means absolute and total acceptance and tolerance for all that others choose to think, say, and do. Intolerance is seen as singularly unloving, despite the fact that Jesus was very intolerant of Sin. In other words, we have, as a society, abandoned love for indifference out of a need to have others accept us. It’s a grievous transgression against God, and it’s one that we’re still paying dearly for.
This man seems to be under the impression that loving one’s enemies requires us to keep silent on the subject of our enemy’s wrongdoings, and I am here to say that such thinking isn’t just false, it’s an egregious sin against the very nature of God. Jesus is our example for what love is supposed to look like, and love is most certainly not what we’re modeling. To make matters worse, we have collectively chosen to take indifference and rename it “love”. If God is love, then He is most certainly NOT indifferent, and that’s where we’ve gone off the rails.
I pray for him, and sincerely hope he repents before the Lord. I especially pray that he realizes that he is doing precisely what he is accusing President Trump of doing, and repents of his hypocrisy. I also pray for our country, and hope that we find our way back from the edge we’ve found ourselves perched on.
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A lot of good points there, TEP. Thanks for taking the time to read and share them.
Hypocrisy is rampant these days. I’m thinking I should write a post just about that.
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One thing I frequently tell people is that all humans are hypocrites to one degree or another. The difference lies in whether people acknowledge it or not.
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Another excellent and timely post, Caroline, thank you. David French is, sadly, completely off base. God doesn’t call us to judge others AND then in the guise of “higher (or holier than thou) morality” try to influence others to do the same, but that is what French is doing. As you noted, French’s argument (which is indeed hypocritical and is something Jesus specifically cautioned us against doing) is, essentially, that President Trump is somehow a worse kind of sinner than French and the rest of us and therefore we grievously err in supporting Trump in any way. And, he goes on to label Trump with the same kind of pejorative and highly offensive terms used by Trump’s enemies. I think God clearly calls us take a much different approach.
French also apparently refuses to vote for either Trump or Biden because he thinks they are both immoral, thereby, practically speaking, actually actively selecting Biden to be our next president. This approach sort of smacks of Pilate attempting to wash his hands of any responsibility while knowing full well that Jesus would still be crucified on his watch. This approach would perhaps make sense if both candidates were actually completely morally bankrupt, but that is not the case. We have a lot of evidence that Biden and his Democratic faithful are morally bankrupt, but we also have a lot of evidence that President Trump is not such a person.
Yes, President Trump has flaws that are all too-apparent when he’s tweeting reactions about his enemies, etc., but tweeting and the like isn’t governing. When we focus on what he’s done as our leader and what he proposes to do then we clearly see someone that wants to do what I consider the “right and necessary things” and that loves and wants the best for all Americans, of all races. His accomplishments and his platform are what we need and couldn’t be more different than those of Biden and his team. Caroline has written terrific posts about these points since at least earlier this year. I’ll add two links, both to articles by Wayne Grudem, a highly regarded theologian, seminary professor, and author: “30 Good Things President Trump Has Done for America” (http://www.waynegrudem.com/list-of-25-good-things-president-trump-has-done-for-america) and “Letter to an Anti-Trump Christian Friend” (https://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2020/08/08/letter-to-an-antitrump-christian-friend-n2573909). I hope these two articles are helpful to anyone wondering if they can or should vote to re-elect President Trump.
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Thank you, David, for taking the time to read and comment. I like your comparison of French to Pilate. “Wash[ing] his hands of any responsibility” does seem an appropriate evaluation.
I first posted this back in February but felt it was worth repeating (with a few minor edits) now that the election is upon us. Thank you for those links. I know I read something Grudem wrote on Trump, and think I might have referenced it in 2016, but I’m going to check out this essay.
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