It is a strange and mysterious thing how many Evangelicals have gone totally silent when it comes to their usual habit of finding Antichrist behind every bush, right when they have someone in front of them who fits the suit better than anyone they have tagged so far. Instead, they are voting for him! They appear to not be taking their own warnings very seriously. Then again, since they have opted to use that label for public figures who dare to value peacemaking (because anyone who promotes peace can only be a wolf in sheep's clothing, seems to be their usual reasoning), like Pope Francis, Jimmy Carter, or Obama), they may not know what to do when someone like Trump comes along, who, in a way more straightforward than any of these others, "will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped..." (II Thes. 2:4a). Evangelicals may want to reconsider their usual bias in interpreting such passages, and also passages like, "For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie..." (II Thes. 2:11).

This is not an attempt on my part to say that Trump is the Antichrist, but to point out that Evangelicals, who have long fancied themselves the experts regarding such things, show a remarkable rigidity of thought, and lack of creativity, when it comes to understanding how these passages are intended to keep the would-be follower of Christ on his/her toes, in the midst of a world that will constantly tempt them. Instead, they have settled into a complacency which concludes that anybody who dares to suggest that the USA may not be identical to the kingdom of God, or that we need to critique ourselves according to a standard other than the world's standard of strength and prosperity (with which our capitalist mindset can be so easily complicit) must be of the devil. At a moment in culture when a deft application of the prophetic theological perspective is called for, Evangelicalism is caught flatfooted. Its years of fancying itself as the “silent majority” have secretly been years of snuggling more and more comfortably into bed with this world’s principalities and powers. How ironic that even a biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer finds himself advocating for Trump! What monstrosity of self-justifying, self-deceiving rationalization makes a position like that possible?

--///-
having heard,
in music,
what can be,

all the rest
of life
struggles,
so desperately,
to keep up

The idea of freedom came to earth, looking for a place to lay its head, but found none. 

There were no peoples on earth willing to accept her presence, once they realized the generosity she would require of them. 

However much they sang her praises, there were none who would modify their dwellings so she could take up residence within them.

There were none who would accommodate their spirits to hers, so that she could be kin to them—more than visitor or invader.

There were none who could see that she would enlarge, rather than reduce, whatever heart she entered—that she came to give, and not to steal.

We proved ourselves too afraid for her; thus we were found unworthy of her.

Once more, freedom retires into the realm of mere thoughts and dreams, until a people generous enough to incarnate her appears again.

In numerous ways, in our world today, we observe the spectacle of those who are decent being attacked by those who are being brutal. This occurs not only in bouts of language, but also in acts of literal, physical violence--and not only in our own country, but around the world.

Something not understood by those who urge that the decent simply strike back--that they simply retaliate with equal force--is that the decent often have something more in mind than just outliving their attackers. It is not enough for the decent merely to survive. It is essential to them that they survive with their essence of decency intact, that they survive according to their own principles.

In the case of democracy, this means that democracy cannot betray its own principles and become repressive, tyrannical, and dictatorial as it responds to anti-democratic forces. In the case of Christianity--to the extent it is a Christianity that understands itself in light of the Sermon on the Mount--this means that it cannot simply reflexively strike back, and simply hate in return, when violence is inflicted upon it.

In each of these cases, decency's task is more complicated than just winning. It also has other values in mind, for which it would be death to itself to lose, even if it should otherwise preserve some semblance of existence in this world. To survive without these values would be to survive as a corpse.

None of this is understood by those who interpret decency's reticence as weakness.

There have been various attempts to explain Donald Trump's strange appeal. I think any adequate explanation needs to recognize how he summons within us a set of instincts which, if we are not careful, can override our more advanced processes of thinking and judgment. In Western society, inspired by the Enlightenment and organized into nation states, we have long since moved beyond the idea that society is guarded by divinely appointed kings. The idea remains compelling to us on a level deeper than intellect, though, and it retains its power to woo us when we feel our best ideas and rational solutions have failed us.

More than we realize, we depend on sets of instincts and patterns for behavior to tell us what to do next. These patterns come to us, in ways we only partly understand, through our genetic endowment, our cultural, religious and family heritage, and our individual experiences. In the language of Jungian psychology, we live in a world of archetypes--basic forms that seem to underlie our experience of reality. We do almost nothing from scratch, but instead call up from these available templates and turn control over to one of them or another. It is like choosing from preprogrammed scripts on a computer or (in the near future) a self-driving car.

Extreme anxiety can cause us to grab for scripts that may not be the most helpful ones, but we are frightened at what might happen if we don’t come up with something quickly. In periods of stress and emergency, templates that tell us how to survive at any cost can clog the flow of other templates which might actually be more useful. Until the alarm bells of emergency can be turned down, we may not be able to access these more helpful scripts.

The experience of not being able to access a useful set of instincts can be terrifying. When this happens, we are especially vulnerable to people who offer to fill the gap for us, to give us a game plan—their own set of instincts and templates for behavior—so that we can be saved from the discomfort of not knowing. Such people can also be masters at activating and turning up the volume of our alarm for emergency. This gives them power to persuade us that we are in desperate need of what they offer.

So, what exactly does Trump offer us? He seems to constellate (another Jungian term) within us archetypes related to the "great man." Trump has been compared to Hitler. I think it may be more accurate, though, to recognize that Trump and Hitler share certain archetypal characteristics, which hearken back to examples much earlier in history, such as Napoleon and--even earlier--Julius Caesar. The idea of the great man is that of someone who brings a new direction to the world, not through ideas, words, and persuasion, but through the sheer force of their personality and action. They are not bound by normal rules or morality, because they are seen as possessing something in their essence that is more important than what these rules are designed to protect. They come into the world like a force of nature, and they move history with the gust of their presence. In this way they are bigger than nations and governments, which are merely the result of ideas and plans.

There is much evidence that we, in our culture, are at a moment of great anxiety concerning what script we should entrust ourselves to now. This puts us at risk. Whatever templates we eventually entrust ourselves to, we may be compelled to live with their consequences for a very long time. Trump offers the possibility of settling into a set of instincts that seem to absolve us of profound anxiety: the anxiety of having to clean up the mess we have made of our civil society. It feels good to believe our current challenges can be swept away by someone who is not bound by society's rules. The cost of giving ourselves over to these relieving instincts, though, is that society will break in the process. At the end of our expensive vacation in fantasy, we will have plenty of work to make up. There is no guarantee that what is reassembled after such a break will be better than what we have right now. The reconstructed world can only be as good as the people involved in making it, and we are those people.

I deplore police militarization, but it is a logical consequence of allowing an increasingly armed public. I also deplore the "take no prisoners" attitude evidenced in some police interactions with the public, in which an alarmed and hyper-vigilant officer shoots before real risk can be ascertained, or when a citizen's behavior would respond more readily to an approach sensitive to mental health concerns. This too, however, can be seen as a result of having a heavily armed populace.

I think police have a reasonable right to expect that they will be more adequately armed than they people they may need to arrest, or otherwise interact with. This is a privilege we afford them as part of the social contract, wherein we give up some of our individual power for the sake of a broader general good. In some societies (real or imagined), a simple baton or a bowie knife, in the hands of an officer, would be enough to ensure physical superiority if things turn south. In a society like ours with its proliferation of guns, though, such superiority cannot be assumed--unless (as is actually happening) police become increasingly militarized, both in weaponry and approach.

We are destined to see a continual ramping up of aggressiveness and force from police as long as they need to contend with increasing levels of risk. It is also not surprising that the underlying judgments about danger that are brought to light by these hyper-vigilant responses will reflect the various forms of prejudice and racism that live in society on conscious and unconscious levels. The effect of this is circular. Mistrust of police can then lead to scenarios in which police feel more threatened. So the story continues. We are in a mess, but we have done plenty to allow ourselves to get there.

Maybe in the final act, there's room for a Donald Trump character--and Donald Trump will play him as well as anybody will. And, there's room for a Hillary Clinton. Maybe, just maybe, there's room for everything and everyone, and it's just that with our novice minds we have no idea of what goes where or why. Maybe In the end there's that final scene and the music plays and all the characters sway--for the first time together--showing that they are all choreographed by the same director, and that they resonate to one human chord. Maybe even the most despised character sheds a tear in that scene, and we find ourselves crying along with him as though he were an uncle, just redeemed from the grip of some colossal error, and we cannot wait to hug him. And if, as with the great Greek tragedies of ancient times, we catch a glimpse of ourselves, and cathart ourselves to a higher plane of awareness, then maybe the whole thing will have been worth it.

There are moments in which one’s freedom resides solely in the power to turn his or her other cheek.

There are moments when turning the other cheek is the only possibility of turning anything at all.

There are moments when the other cheek is the only thing that one has power to turn.

The turning of a cheek—by someone, somewhere, in some measure—is the only possible way by which peace begins to supplant violence.

The turning of the world is commenced with the turning of a single cheek.

The option of turning the other cheek can never be mandated, for anyone. It cannot come into being except by the free choice of the one who offers to do so. It can never be imposed, as an obligation, upon someone else. It can only be undertaken, voluntarily, by oneself. It requires incredible courage and strength to do so.

Our evaluation of others always needs to balanced with an equal measure of evaluation towards ourselves. None of us are merely cogs in a machine, with our lives being made miserable solely by the actions of others. We are not merely acted upon. We are also actors ourselves, affecting others with our own behaviors. Our responses are never merely a mechanistic backlash, for which we have no responsibility, but are the result of how we interpret events, and the meanings we assign to things that happen.

If the world seems chaotic, it is always necessary and helpful to address the portion of that chaos that relates to what is going on inside of ourselves. That is not to say that the rest doesn’t matter, but that we are not in a position to address the storm that rages outside of us until we’ve understood and accounted for the one that rages inside of us. Doing so does not guarantee that the world won't ultimately fall apart, but it does guarantee that, if it does, I will not forget who I am in the midst of it. It is more likely, though, that the world will not ultimately fall apart, and that part of the reason it won't is that I, along with others, have gotten ahold of my own reactions, and struggle to find a way to reason peacefully about the disputes that remain.

If I don't come to grips with my own internal reality, and take responsibility for my own reactions, I will not be in a position to experience peace, even if the external disputes become resolved. I will still be the victim of my internal storm. In a world that is out of control, self-knowledge and self-control are not merely a quaint, Victorian prescription. They are indispensable conditions for a better possible tomorrow--for all of us.