Photo Otto Rascon
Donald Trump Is the Personification of Evil
I am an evangelical Christian. I am a Baptist. I am a preacher. Many of my fellow evangelicals have opined Donald Trump is “God’s anointed.” Self-professed prophets among my fellow evangelicals have claimed Trump is the most Christian-friendly president in our nation’s history.
Lance Wallnau famously claimed when he realized if Trump won the 2016 election he would be the 42nd president of the United States. He says God told him to read Isaiah 42. This is a rather dubious claim, but in Isaiah 42 the story of Cyrus is told. He is a pagan king who released the Jews to return home. Wallnau concluded Trump was God’s choice to lead our nation back to greatness.
In 2016 and 2020, more than 84% of evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. The claims made on his behalf have bordered on the idolatry of seeing Trump as a political Messiah of the nation.
As an evangelical Baptist preacher, I dissent from this received evangelical view. Trump is not God’s anointed; he is the personification of evil. One particular habit of Trump makes him the paradigmatic example of evil: He is a serial liar. Jesus says, “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
These words spoken to the Pharisees apply to Trump. He lies constantly; he lies even when it is not necessary to lie. He lies because lying works. The clear connection between the devil and lying puts Trump in the category of evil.
In Trump we mee the Prince of Darkness leading people in the way of darkness. He lead people on the path of political alienation, demagoguery, violence, and authoritarianism. He exudes a nihilistic pathos, a destructive spirit of anarchy and chaos. He is a political disrupter. His reliance of braggadocio, hyperbole, and vitriol promotes distrust and animosity. He ravages democratic norms and values, undermines civic culture, and inhibits deliberation.
In his study of Psalms, Andre Chouraqui describes the Prince of Darkness. He uses the word “Racha” to define the one unable to face God’s judgment, the Reprobate. The psalter describes the Racha a the enemy, the liar, the madman, the powerful, the bull of Bashan, the man of violence, the man of deceit, the man of iniquity, the devourer of people, the traitor, the perfidious, the son of the barbarian, the man of blood, the stupid fellow, the profiteer, the proud man, the haughty eye, the thief, the braggart, the assassin, the land-grabber, the boaster, the vainglorious, the dreadful, the sinner, the harsh, the malicious, the greedy, the bearer of infamy, the trouble-forger, the worker of iniquity, the trapper, the flame-thrower, the scoffer, the blasphemer, the treacherous tongue, the crooked, the rebel, the vindictive, the adversary, the fool, the bent one.
Chouraqui describes the man of evil: “He is the very center of the assembly of the violent, of the horrible, of the eyes that dart destruction, of the senseless people, of the council of scoffers, of the crafty, of the wicked, of the band of malefactors, of the destroyers. He is the opulent, the wealthy, the despoiler, the worker of sin, the man with heart puffed up, the one whom earth holds reprobate, the ferocious, the forger of nothingness. He is the enemy of justice, the man oblivious to God, the oppressor, the adversary of peace. He wields the Scepter of Evil; he is the Accuser, so styled by his name in Hebrew: Satan.”
The man of evil incarnates a radical nothingness, an emptiness. His every word consummates a lie, his every action, a deed of self-concern. He is a wounded creature; nothing can satisfy his insatiability for power, popularity, and wealth.
This is the description of Donald Trump: the incarnation of evil being passed off as an “angel of light” by preachers who should know better.
He is nothing more than a big mouth of mockery and gnashing of teeth. He lives for his own pleasure and the exercise of his own ruthless power. His will to power unfurls without rule or measure. He misuses power and justice for oppression and subjugation. He perverts justice, declares false what is true, fake what is real, and calls true what is a lie. He cast on everyone he approaches the darkness that he has created.
An incarnation of evil as he is, whose works sprout like a luxurious head of orange-tinted hair on the people whom he seduces and subjugates, he knows no shame, constraint, or reluctance to do evil.
To say Trump is a demagogue, a bully, a rhetorical pervert, a serial liar, an authoritarian, a braggart, a false prophet, an impulsive and pragmatic fool is not enough. He is all these things, but the one defining characteristic of Donald Trump: He is the RACHA – the man of evil.
He is the personification of what Scripture defines as evil.
The writer of Proverbs describes Trump:
Trump is as far from being God’s anointed as the East is from the West. What he really is can only be described as the culmination of what God most hates:
I am an evangelical Christian. I am a Baptist. I am a preacher. Donald Trump is the definition of evil.
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