
(Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)
Unless you were living under a rock the whole year, you were aware that the big news story of 2020 was the United States presidential election. President Donald Trump was seeking re-election against his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Throughout the election, there was a loud chorus by Donald Trump’s base, including the evangelicals, that Donald Trump was God’s chosen candidate. Many prominent evangelical leaders even predicted that President Trump would be re-elected.
Alas, Election Day came and went. Finally, four days after Election Day, Joe Biden was declared the winner. Joe Biden won the popular vote by 7 million people, with a total of 306 electoral votes, compared to Donald Trump’s 232 electoral votes. Then, all hell broke loose as shock and horror rumbled through the Republican Party like an earthquake.
What followed was a bizarre series of conspiracy theories as to how the election was ‘fraudulent and stolen’. Eighty million people chose former Vice President Joe Biden as their next president in a legal and fair election. However, those votes were suddenly meaningless and declared invalid by the President’s base and evangelicals because President Trump lost the election. This led to an all-out campaign to overturn the election results. Trump’s supporters took up arms and fought because they believed that the election was stolen. At a recent Trump protest in Washington, I watched as the President’s followers destroyed church property, attacked, and intimidated counter protestors, while wearing ‘God for Trump’ tee shirts. Millions of people were willing to help Trump overturn the election by any means, including lying, cheating, intimidation, violence, and even insurrection and murder.
If evangelicals find this behavior acceptable or believe that God would condone these actions, then I believe they are confused and misguided about the nature and heart of God. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus condone lying, cheating, intimidation, violence, rioting or murder for any reason and certainly not for a presidential election. So then, I ask, which God are they fighting for? Jehovah God or Donald Trump?
I believe the cult like obsession we are witnessing in Trump’s followers is driven by the idolatry of a self-worshiping and self-serving President. Idolatry is the worship of something or someone other than God as if it were God. In the Bible, Exodus 20:3-6 states, ‘You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God.’
Unfortunately, President Trump seems to be living in an alternate reality and has convinced his followers, including many evangelicals, to live in his alternate reality with him. Trump’s reality has no resemblance to the kingdom of God.
I encourage my Christian brothers and sisters to return to their first love, and spend some time reacquainting themselves with scriptures about false teachers and false doctrines that infiltrate the body of Christ. Regardless of what is going on around you, Christians need to stay focused and not be distracted by the world around us. The truth is that we serve an awesome God who is omnipresent and omniscient. He is the only God that matters.