Many Evangelicals have made a mistake when they made a deal with Donald Trump. “Vote for me,” he said, “and I will give you Supreme Court picks and abolish the Johnson Amendment.” Mr. Trump’s “tempting” offer is remarkably like another made two millennia ago… when the devil offered Jesus the power to rule over all the kingdoms of the world with justice and mercy, if only Christ would bow down to the devil. American Christians should not have taken a deal Jesus rejected. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36.
Evangelicals want to change America through politics and the courts. They fear the decline of Christianity if the Supreme Court shifts any further to the left, and they want to take it back to the right. So, they have focused on the promises of Mr. Trump to bring conservatives on to the Supreme Court and fashion it in their image.
But if the churches need the Court to save souls and empower faithful witness – both spoken and lived, then they are truly lost. Christ promised a cross and the Holy Spirit, not tax breaks for businesses and a worldly Court to defend Christian beliefs.
It is folly for Evangelicals to place their hope of religious freedom in a man who says he’ll use the government to give them more power. Why do they need more civil power, except to force their will and their beliefs on others? Can’t they preach powerful life-changing sermons and live powerful lives that will change hearts like Jesus did?
And where did this anti-Johnson Amendment stuff come from? In what world do they think it’s a good idea to allow churches to use their tax-deductible tithes and offerings in the support of political candidates and for churches to become openly partisan political operations? Is there a faster way to turn God’s house from a house of prayer into a den of thieves?!
What will this do to the evangelical witness? By accepting Trump’s deal, Evangelicals have traded all they are – their spiritual heritage – for a “mess of pottage.” Yes, that’s right. Evangelicals were the spiritual descendents of the great Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Once compromised by the ecumenical movement (they no longer carry a protestant message), they lost their spiritual birthright and became vulnerable to political temptations of the Trump Presidency.
Mr. Trump will definitely not save the church’s influence in an increasingly secular world. As a politician, the only thing he can do is give them more political power. He cannot restore their moral influence, or morality and Christian decency in America for that matter. Those things are gone forever, except in the lives of faithful souls who live above all the political distractions in the light of Christ’s countenance.
But the age-old question for Christians during times of moral decline is whether they will turn to a strongman for salvation from the liberal left, or keep faith in the One who controls the strongman through meekness, love, sacrifice, and forgiveness. God’s kingdom will come regardless, sooner or later. But what will Evangelicals say when the Lord asks them in whom they trusted in the last days?
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Psalm 146:3 and 4.