Co-missioners,
Peter Keyel, a professor in the biological sciences department at Texas Tech University, is a longtime contributor to our work at Crossings. He has written now and then for Thursday Theology, most recently in August of last year. His was one of three reflections featured in a piece entitled “More Thoughts on the Mess We Are In.” Some weeks ago, Peter sent us the essay we share with you today. It could well be read as an expansion on his thoughts of last year. He certainly pushes us to think more deeply and usefully than usual about who all of us are still contending with in “this mess we are in,” and more to the point, about where genuine help is finally to be found.
Could there possibly be a topic more fitting for this American day? It is, after all, September 11. Kyrie eleison.
Peace and Joy,
Jerry Burce, Co-editor
for the Crossings Community
____________________________________________________________________________
America’s Political Divide and the Wrath of God
by Peter Keyel
The political climate in the U.S. drives angst amongst many Americans. According to some, the U.S. is in shambles because the current president, Donald Trump, is enacting an agenda that would make Nero blush. Yet others see Trump as a modern-day Cyrus, sent by God to deliver America not only from the former Biden regime but also from decades of oppression at the hands of the “woke” left, and in so doing to restore the greatness of the American empire.
How do people with such different views talk about anything with the other side, let alone proclaim something to them? When it comes to politics, the common message from both old and new medias is that having the Wrong Person in charge means the end of the U.S. and the destruction of the world in the process. So we need to convince the others to repent of their evil ways and figure out how to get them to be human again. Thus the reasoning. Of course, those who have taken this approach have likely figured out the hard way that this is a losing strategy. It increases rifts, and repentance is nowhere to be found.
From Canva
A reason for this is that we are doing repentance wrong. Most discussion by people critical of Mr. Trump (or, from the other side, of Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama) focuses on all the wrongs that Trump, Biden, Obama, and “the other side” are committing. The spiritual malaise besetting our country is centered on Trump, Biden, Obama, and/or the “other side.” Yet, if we turn to Scripture, history, or Luther’s writings, we find a different focus:
From Romans 13:1-7—
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Attributed to Genghis Khan—
“If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
From Martin Luther’s “War Against the Turk”—
“He [the Turk] is God’s rod and the devil’s servant; there is no doubt about that.”
Paul described the emperor of his time, Nero, as “God’s servant for your good” whose role is also “to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” Nero was hardly the worst ruler that God has used through history as the rod of His wrath. Genghis Khan was a much worse ruler to his opponents than Trump, Biden, or Obama have been or could be to any of us. Luther, in his discussion about the Turkish invasion, viewed the temporal stakes and the spiritual stakes as separate issues. This is the key, because temporal stakes and spiritual stakes get conflated when we are faced with hostile authorities. Today there are many Powers and Principalities within the media and in Hell that want us focused on the temporal stakes and/or the spiritual failure of the other.
This is not to say that a spiritual element is missing from U.S. politics. To the contrary. We saw this vividly last year in Butler, Pennsylvania, where many are convinced that God intervened to save Donald Trump’s life so he could become president. It is hard to argue with this. If one believes that God is involved at all in the details of our lives, how can one not see God’s hand in this event, especially when it was a last second turn of the head that changed the fate of a life and the course of the most powerful nation on earth.
Now, whether God spared Mr. Trump to restore a broken nation and world or to function as a rod of God’s wrath is a much murkier question. A U.S. president occupies the most-definitive “left-hand” role in the world. I mean left-hand in the Lutheran sense whereby God works to preserve society and restrain sinners through God’s Law. Mr. Trump needs to be understood within this context of God’s Law. God’s Law preserves creation, orders society, executes God’s wrath against sinners, and leaves sinners with no escape except Christ. This is every U.S. president’s job, whether the president acknowledges God or Christ or not. So regardless of how one feels about Mr. Trump, whether positively or negatively, to view him or his statements in a salvific or Messianic light as many are doing is a confusion of Law and Gospel. It conflates God’s left-hand work carried out in part by human authorities with God’s “right-hand” work of salvation that unfolds solely through Jesus Christ.
What many miss about God’s wrath is that it is first and foremost directed against us (as opposed to others) as sinners. The only option we have in the face of God’s wrath is repentance. This starts with self-reflection. People who abhor Mr. Trump might reflect thus: What have we done (or left undone) that got us into this situation? Why did over 70 million plus people vote for someone we regard as the Great Satan? What must people have experienced that they celebrate and push for what we see as evil? And most important, how have our actions merited God’s wrath against us? Are we participating in an evil system because the cost is too high to opt out? Are we being jerks or worse because we can?
Most of the political discussion has avoided the idea that a political leader you dislike, enacting policies that hurt you, is a manifestation of God’s wrath against you. Some of that is starting to change, as shown from this expression of despair that appeared on a social media platform when Mr. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed:
One of the most blackpilling things is that despite how patently odious of a leader and a human he is, and how obviously terrible his policy and proposals and actions are, Trump always wins. It always turns out in his favor. He f’***’s up one thousand times in a row, he is largely reviled, he’s a joke, and yet somehow at the end of the f***ing day he gets his way. He’ll be sitting at the resolute desk tomorrow signing this f***ing cataclysm for the 4th like he promised.
God is real and He hates us.
[A note on “pills” and “pilling”: Pills are originally a reference from the movie The Matrix, with “redpills” being ideas/events that (in theory) let you see reality as it is. This idea has since expanded to include “blackpills”, ideas/events that lead one to despair; and “whitepills”, ideas/events that create hope. It can be used as noun or verb as needed.]
The fundamental source of the angst over the last five years is that different segments of society have experienced or are currently experiencing God’s wrath in a way that they have not felt before. Encountering God’s wrath is a massive blackpill, repentant or not.
From Canva
Yet, we have the greatest whitepill of them all: God’s mercy through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Like God’s wrath, God’s mercy is also directed to us. God’s promise in Christ is that God will see us through rulers hostile to us, even when it costs us our time on earth. Our sins are forgiven because it pleases God to do so. God’s wrath is disarmed by Christ. Forgiveness of sins and repentance follows from Christ’s triumph over sin and death.
When the Holy Spirit creates (or re-creates) that faith in us, how does it change our outlook? How does it feel to be nestled in God’s love for us? What new viewpoints does repentance create within us? While still important, are we able to see that the temporal events are secondary to the spiritual events? Have we been freed to release our angst and worries, because we are assured of God’s victory over sin and death? Even in Romans 13, rulers are secondary to Paul’s exhortations because they come and go.
This brings us full circle back to “what do we do about and how do we talk with people whose opinion are fundamentally different than our own?”
First and foremost comes a realization of what is NOT our burden. It is not our job to bring “the other side” to repentance. This has a terrible track record. And if we have trouble talking to them, proclamations of what we think is the Gospel may be lost in translation. We are freed to trust that God holds the others in His hands. We can thank God for the Christ-trusters on the other side, even though they have an alien view of God’s wrath playing out in the U.S. Even if we have trouble understanding those other Christ-trusters’ positions on many things, we can trust in the God who has used sinners throughout history to convey His Promise to different peoples.
Those who share or want to share our values and fundamental assumptions about the world (and have similar experiences of God’s wrath against us) may be more receptive to what we proclaim about Christ. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers few. We all have a lot of witness ahead of us.
Perhaps our faith that Christ will see us through all of these temporal events means we can look past ideological and identitarian lines in some cases and some activities to find common ground. From that common ground, we can build (or rebuild) relationships.
Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use
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