Category: Politics

Some of my Trump-supporting friends concede that President Trump is a narcissist.  Just about all of my anti-Trump friends argue that he is a dangerous narcissist.  And that is the issue of issues for them.  This presses me to Scripture for how to approach those in power and government and the biblical teaching on how to deal with those in government power.  But first, there are real problems in this claim.  It also shows an arrogance that can bring us into disfavor with God.

1.  If one is to claim this on the grounds of professional psychology, then one should know that it is not ethical to make a diagnosis from afar, without a clinical evaluation in a clinical setting.

2. There are too many people close to Trump that remain friends after many years for this to be true.  Some behavior indeed may be like such a person, but how do I account for his wife, what his x wife says, his children and friends. These friends of decades and include the great black football player Herschel Walker and the social justice warrior Geraldo Rivera.  And so many more can be named.  It includes men and women.

So it seems to me that the issue is that humans have amazing ability to compartmentalize in mind and behavior One part can be good and compassionate and another part may be immediately violent and vengeful.  One part may be generous and the other part so defensive when criticized.  As a pastor, I have seen this so much fo so many years in people.  We have to address the whole person and see every thought come into conformity to Yeshua. We are to pray for our President to come into all that God would desire. I so prayed for Obama and do also for Trump, and regularly. 

However, according to the standard of the New Covenant, we are warned consistently to not vilify and rail against leaders.  Unless a leader is fostering genocide or terrible crimes, we are to pray and be humble in speaking correction.   I think it is valid in to raise character questions, and to raise policy and voting records and even conclude that policies are radial.  But cursing the personhood of the leader or vilifying can bring judgment to the person who does this.   Here are the texts that should guide us.

I Tim. 2:1   “First of all, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all people–for kings and all who are in authority–so that we may live a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and respectfulness.  This is good and pleasing to God our Savior.” 

Acts 23:5   “Paul said, I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest  for it has been written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a rule of your people.”

Judah (Jude) “But when Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, was arguing about the body of Moses, he did not dare to render a judgment against him for slander, but said, “May the LORD rebuke you.”  But these people slander whatever they do not understand.”

How does this apply?  We can strongly disagree with policy and should try to represent the policies we criticize fairly.  We can point to behavior that shows character issues.  However, we should not curse the identity of the person.  We must avoid arrogance and cursing the person, “He is a narcissist, he is an evil predator, She is a Jezebel, etc. etc. ”    There has been way too much arrogance in the debates and way too much lack of understanding the positions of the other, way too little engaging.  Do we understand the position of the other to their satisfaction?

And finally, for those on this page who follow Yeshua, do we really believe that the future depends on this election, or do we believe that repentance and revival are the only things that can turn things around, yielding the spirit of love and compassion as the motive for seeking justice?   As the U. S. spins out of control in our cities, I still am looking from Israel and waiting for that great contingent of spiritual leaders of all colors and ethnicities to stand together with thousands and thousands calling for love and reconciliation, who will preach the Good News of reconciliation. 

 

THE GREAT  COMPLEXITY OF POLITICAL TERMS LEFT AND RIGHT, AND EXTREME LEFT AND RIGHT, AND RADICAL LEFT AND RIGHT, AND MODERATE LEFT AND RIGHT makes our discussion of issues difficult.  We use these terms to show that there is a cohesion in identifiable groups of people.  However, as I learned in philosophy, no term is circumscribed with clear lines of demarcation, and terms only describe areas of meaning with fuzzy lines.  My friend Eitan Shishkoff responded to my post on selective compassion where I speak about the far left and radical left and was concerned that I would alienate unnecessarily people who would think they were being pigeonholed.  So, I want to just give some definition.  I want to introduce this by noting that the center hardly exists today in American politics in the sense that there are really people that are almost in the middle between the great parties.  Joe Biden used to be such a person, what we would call moderate left or left of center, but he now seems to be embracing more radical policies that he used to eschew.  Also, Maine Senator Susan Collins would be considered moderate right, very centrist.

No issue has been so clearly a dividing issue than abortion.  There used to be pro-choice Republicans, but now only Susan Collins is known for that stand.  There used to be pro-life Democrats, but now only Senator Casey from Pennsylvania and a conservative pro-life Democrat from the South hold to such positions.  Pro-life people consider the Democratic party to itself have become radical since they do not support limiting abortion to the early months of pregnancy and now almost universally support abortion at all stages of pregnancy for any reason, even up to the point of birth.  The Virginia governor even spoke of letting the baby die after being born alive though the baby could be saved.  No issue has been more polarizing and due to this, many pro-lifers now will not vote for Democrats.  To think that 60 years ago the Democrats were the favored party of Evangelicals, many of whom like my Norwegian family, loved Franklin Roosevelt. Most were pro-life.

One of the problems in dealing with the issues of right and left is that the terms do not mean what they did just a few years ago.  More and more of the people in the Democrat party, in my view, no longer are left of center but are really on the left fully.  Some of the same people who would have been moderate left have moved more to the left.  We also see the more moderate left losing elections to the radical left candidates.  I will speak of this more. Abortion is only one such issue. But we can list many more such issues.   Here are some other key other issues on which Democrats are united.  The Democratic party as a whole embraces the LGBTQ agenda fully.  A few years ago, Barak Obama said he was not in favor of gay marriage.  Now they accept the idea of pregnant men in the men’s barracks (an Obama regulation).  Joe Biden used to support the Hyde amendment that did not allow spending tax payer dollars for abortions.  This is an accommodation to pro-life religious conviction.  Now he has dropped his old position.  This is a position of the left.  The idea that religious conviction for charities is overridden, and they must support health services (like contraception) is the position of the Democrats now.  (This was recently overturned by the Supreme Court, thank God.) The idea that Catholic adoption agencies after so many successful years can no longer partner with the state since they want to place children in homes with mothers and fathers, has been accepted.  The idea that nurses and doctors should not be able to opt out of abortion services in hospitals due to conscience is strongly held.  Democrats used to support charter schools but with the pressure from the teaches union, they are mostly now dropping that support. On the issue of private artistic business being required to be accomplices to gay weddings, what they would consider sin, is a Democratic position (the Supreme Court rule against the Democratic position. They now talk about packing the Supreme Court to get their agenda established.  In issue after issue, the mainstream Democrats have moved more and more left.  They used to be anti-Socialist but desired more spending for the welfare side of the State.  There is now a very strong anti-religious bent now to former party of the Evangelicals.  On the environment, they seek to avoid the answer to the green house issues in natural gas as a transition and nuclear (a best solution) for fantasies of wind power.   They have adopted more of the radical green new deal (AOC) which they used to reject.  I do not think we can talk about moderate Democrats today.  There are a few and some may privately think in more moderate terms, but they have been pushed left.  I now say the Democratic party is leftist with strong socialist influence.  But this is not the same as what I mean by radical or extreme leftists.

What do I mean by extreme left or radical left.  The radicals have embraced a host of directions that align them more with types of revisionist Marxism.  In some ways what is being put forth is more like Hebert Marcuse’s later book on Revolution written in 1969.  Here are some aspects of this.

1. A fully socialist agenda
2. Cancel culture.  Those who espouse conservative views are to be canceled and not part of the discussion. Religious and political views that used to be within normal dialogue and debate are now to not be permitted.  Free speech is questioned.  The Constitution is not valued. This will lead to religious persecution.  In today’s Jerusalem Post, Zalman Shoval spoke out strongly against this and worried that this orientation is totalitarian and leads usually to Anti-Semitism.  He gave several examples.  Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Denins Prager are only a few that are sounding the alarm.
3. Traditional religious moral teaching on sexuality and marriage is defined as hate speech.  You can see this with the radicals that last night burned Bibles in Portland.  Also, former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s called for Churches that do not support LGBTQ lifestyle legitimacy to lose their tax exemption.  (He was not speaking about civil rights, but about what the churches are allowed to believe and teach).
4. The doctrine of intersectionality where all oppressed people are one and their oppressors are to be identified together.  This includes vilifying white men as oppressors of women and minorities, white women called karens who do not fully embrace the cause, seeing Israel as the oppressor of the Palestinians which is leading to Anti-Semitism (witness Congresswoman Ilhan Omer), ending the favoring of the hetero-normal nuclear family.  Then there is demanding minority hiring to the percent they have designed (23% black hiring in Seattle), defunding the police, allowing criminals to be released form jails, even if violent).
5. Legitimizing violence in the protests for racial justice.  Note that 81% of Blacks polled said they want more police presence or at least the same amount.  The anti-police radicals do not represent the Black community.
6. Claiming that America was born in sin and America is from first to last an evil nation. They claim that the founders were not good people even though some founders were abolitionist.  They have torn down statues of Washington and Grant!  There is an anti-American thrust that is painful to watch. All nations are mixtures, more or less, of good and evil.  Selective research can make any nation into evil incarnate.

One sees this sweeping the college campuses and also popular culture. Teen Vogue just had an article calling for abolishing private property.  One sees it in the response to Heather McDonald, the researcher on statistics for how police treat blacks, banned on social media.  She may be wrong, but she is a serious researcher who does not think the racism with police is as great as claimed.  She should be part of the debate and the questions do need more research.

What is sad is that the former moderate Democrats are not speaking out strongly against the radical leftist views.  And in addition, the racial leftists are winning primaries against the mainstream.  Somehow the mainstream Democrats are now less mainstream and do not speak out firmly against those in the protests that are violent, against Antifa, against police defunding.  Any words have been mere qualifications, tepid, almost as if they need the radicals as part of their vote.  The university campuses have largely been lost to  radical views.

I think the country is in very bad straights.  So due to all of this, I have concluded that only mighty spiritual revival can stem the tide.  The darkness is very dark right now, but as promised to Israel in Isaiah 66:1,2, the light can arise and has before in history in times of great darkness.

A family relative is a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter protests and has played down the violence and riots that come more from the mostly white radicals that have hijacked the movement.   My daughter in law wrote a response.   Then she was taken to task for not agreeing with the millions of aggrieved black people but pointing out problems with the protests.  Then my daughter in law wrote a response, and it was brilliant.  She noted that she is a person of color, from Guatemala with Sephardic Jewish, Spanish and native American roots.  She knows well about discrimination.  She was being treated as if she was from white privilege!  How bizarre was that?  She shared personal information on the trials of growing up, coming to America for high school and then becoming an overcomer.  Then she married my son. She gave a valiant defense of her experience, knowledge and right to speak up as a minority person.  Of course, Yeshua made all the difference.  However, the essence of her post was a critique of the selective empathy and rage that ignores the suffering of others that do not fit into the political agenda of the left.  It was brilliant and inspired this post of mine.

When people respond to Black Lives Matter by saying All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, they are vilified.  The right answer instead of vilification might be to say, “Yes, all lives matter, but we are highlighting the injustice done to blacks.”  That would be a valid response.  Then we can look at the stats to see the evidence for how bad the police treatment of blacks is.  We can also examine prejudice otherwise in education, jobs, housing, (not on the basis of stats that show disparate levels of attainment or imprisonment, etc. but on the basis of unfair treatment compared to other people of races in parallel situations of crime or qualification for work, etc..  We will find problems.  What offends some is the callousness toward some who are suffering due to the violent aspects of the protests that do not fit into the narrative of the leftist agenda.  Where is the empathy for the small business people whose businesses have been destroyed by the rioters, and this includes black and other minority business owners?  Where is the empathy for the police who have been killed in the rioting, and indeed this includes black police?  Where is the empathy for their wives and children?  The left media mostly ignores this.  Where is the empathy for those who were employed by some of these businesses and now have lost their jobs?!!  There is also little empathy for those who have been killed in black on black violence including innocent children, 7,500 per year!  Those in these neighborhoods cry out to not defund the police who protect them, even if they sometimes act wrongly. In some cities now there are many black police, in Atlanta a majority but still they are attacked.   Why?  The radical left seeks revolution and reject the black police as part of the evil establishment.

I have noted the very selective empathy of the left for a long time.  Has anyone noticed that the leftist movements are really very self-centered?  For example, it is a good thing that women are free to pursue opportunities according to their gifts and desires, but that the feminist movement does not care about the oppression of women in Islamic countries.  Only Christianity is accused of stifling patriarchy when such stifling patriarchy was historically the case in most cultures and worse than in the West.   Is there concern about the oppression of Hindu religion that keeps the poor in their poverty as their just deserts in reincarnation.  Who cares about the persecution of Christians because they have liberated these people form their oppression?  We could go on and on.  Or who cares about the terrible suffering and persecution of Christians in many lands?  Not on the news!

One of the amazing aspects of the teaching and modeling of Yeshua is the empathy for all who are suffering and in need.  The prophetic thrust of God being with the poor, the widow and the orphan (the marginalized) is given the strongest support as Yeshua brings supernatural healing, deliverance and hope to them.  However, He also can show love for the oppressors.  He heals the servant of the Roman soldier.  The Roman soldiers are the oppressors.  He tells his followers to turn the cheek to the Roman soldiers and to carry the load a second mile when they are conscripted for the task.  This shows the love of God to the oppressor.  He not only eats with prostitutes, who are very wounded, abused and deeply damaged, but eats with tax collectors, collaborationists with Rome and despised by most.  Yeshua taught the way of love and reconciliation but in a context that called for repentance and forgiveness by all.  All hatred was to be renounced.  In the present situation of protests, much of it driven by atheists according to a recent poll, we believers have a special opportunity.  Followers of Yeshua are called to stand for justice but in a context of biblical love that is not selective in empathy.  That empathy is given to all who are suffering in the present, the protestors including the peaceful and violent who are so deceived, those who have been ruined by the violent rioters, and finally to show love for those who oppress, for the oppressor destroys him or herself.  We call upon all to repent and submit to the Gospel and then join in love and reconciliation.   Only the Gospel has the answer, and it is the only world view where real justice can be advanced.  We are not to show selective empathy but do emphasize reaching the marginalized as the first priority.