Who Lies in YHWH’s Tent?

(Lectionary for January 2 9)

The era of President Donald Trump has begun, and it has not begun auspiciously. The new president spent the day of his inauguration and the day following in a school- yard spat with multiple news sources who quite accurately reported that the crowds at his inauguration were something like one-third as large as Barack Obama’s crowds at his inauguration in 2009. CNN announced this fact, and it was corroborated by professional crowd estimators who viewed and evaluated the same photos available to anyone with eyes to see. Yet, the new press secretary ranted in his first meeting with the White House press pool that these were lies fomented by the “liberal press,” and that the crowds were in fact “the largest ever assembled” for an inaugural event. Just what are we to think about all this admittedly rather trivial matter of crowd size in Washington D.C? The conclusion must be that we have entered an Orwellian world of “newspeak,” where up is down and black is white, a place where “alternative facts” (a bizarre phrase repeated by Kelly Ann Conway, an ubiquitous Trump surrogate), two words that used to be a synonym for falsehood, but now have become apparently an acceptable way to combat what we used to know as facts, that is truths supported by genuine and accepted evidence. It has become a time when we all, according to Lewis Carroll, are asked to “believe six unbelievable things before breakfast.”

I admit to a genuine queasiness about all this, a roiling in brain and stomach that is nothing less than an earthquake of emotional distress. Not only does this new administration appear to be bald-faced liars, they at the same time present themselves as grossly incompetent. Indeed, the choice for Secretary of Education, Betty DeVos, has no knowledge of any of the serious questions that surround the needs of public school students and teachers in this country, as her senate appearances reveal all too clearly. Her chief qualification appears to be her deep pockets in support of the new president. The one startling fact about the 15 cabinet choices that Mr. Trump has made is that their total net worth surpasses the net worth of the 45,000,000 poorest of their fellow American citizens! Gaze at that fact again and ask yourself just where we as a country are headed.

(Steve Bannon, chief spokesperson for Donald Trump)  Both Micah 6:1-8 and Psalm 15 are needed now more than ever. I have on other occasions of this blog dealt with the famous passage from the prophet Micah, so I will spend time today with Ps 15. This is one of the so-called “psalms of ascent,” hymns that may have been employed by pilgrims as they went up to the temple of Jerusalem to worship YHWH. Whether or not that exact context can be ascertained does not take from the poem its contemporary relevance. Listen to its opening lines:

YHWH, who may live in your tent;

who may dwell on your holy hill?

Worshippers and followers of this God have certain requirements that they must meet before they may presume to worship in the sacred place, and they must answer some questions before entering into that place of worship, before they can be trusted to confront the mighty YHWH in that God’s most sacred space. The first requirement is the most crucial: only “those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, speaking truth from their heart, who do not slander with their tongues, do no evil to their friends, nor take up any reproach against their neighbors” (Ps 15:2-3). These are hard and fast demands for entry into the temple place, not suggestions or possible regulations. Blameless truth telling, followed by right actions based on that truth are required for any who approach the Holy One.

I, of course, do not mean to imply that Donald Trump and his cabinet should necessarily be held to these standards before they enact any laws for the land; I am a firm believer in the strict separation between church and state, as Jefferson and Hamilton, among many other of our founders, made clear again and again. Still, it has been a long-held custom for those who would lead the nation that their actions be judged on bases such as these: actions based on truth and truth based on observable fact. Those times in our history when our leaders have shattered these accepted norms—Richard Nixon during Watergate and Vietnam, Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky perhaps the most recent examples—our systems have acted against them, forcing the resignation of the former and the impeachment of the latter. In short, we have all as Americans counted heavily on the full faith and actions of the federal government to protect us against those who would lie for their own self-aggrandizement and act in ways that enshrine those lies in the laws they would enact.

Indeed, Ps 15 goes on to suggest at least a few ways that such lies produce terrible public behaviors, namely “taking a bribe against the innocent” (Ps 15:5), and as we saw above “taking up a reproach against their neighbors.” If these dangerous individuals dare live by their lies, they will be incapable of “honoring those who worship YHWH,” and will be unable to “stand by their oath even to their own hurt” (Ps 15:4). That latter dilemma is worth some further exploration.

Those who live with lies, and who live by lies, are thereby incapable of standing for the truth even and especially when that stance is not for their benefit, but rather for the benefit of others. Liars tell and repeat untruths because they are afraid that the truth will not be good for them. If President Trump had simply admitted that the crowds at his inauguration were smaller than those who attended his predecessor’s inauguration, but that those who came were deeply enthusiastic and energized by the prospect of the change in government, not a single negative reaction would have been raised. But the out and out lie that he and his spokespeople continue to tell about this matter reveal to us his insecurity and fury against any who would dare disagree, making of all of us who saw the truth of the thing his enemies rather than his fellow citizens. I pray that we are not in for a diet of such antagonisms over the next four years, but I fear that this small matter of inauguration crowd counting may be indicative of a robust and caustic “us-against-them” mentality that will do none of us much good but may further erode any chances we may have for a unity of purpose and common hope for a better world.

“Who may live on your holy hill?” asks the psalmist. Those who tell truth and act on it, answers the ancient poet. It is now up to us to demand truth from our leaders, however trivial or crucial, if we are to become a whole nation once again. Because I am ever the optimist, I will continue to hope for the best. But because I am ever the realist, I will strive to hold any liars’ feet to the proverbial fire. Such may be our work in the world of Donald Trump.  (The Temple of Truth, Thailand below)  (images from Wikimedia Commons)