You cannot trust in God
Sacred to Somebody 1/23/25
Standing on the promises of God
There’s a hymn I know from my times in church called “Standing On the Promises of Christ My King”. As a pastor, I never would have chosen this hymn to sing during worship, but I’ve been in plenty of church services where people sing it with gusto, as if the louder and more often they repeat the idea that you can trust in God’s promises, the more true it will become.1
There are plenty of passages in the Bible where writers promise God’s help, protection, and rewards for the righteous. According to them, if we are faithful and need help, God’s got our back, as in Psalm 121, where the composer asks: “From where will my help come?”
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
To me, God’s promises always seemed like shaky ground.
The problem is, right there in that same Bible are books like Lamentations or Job, where we see the writers wrestling with God’s lack of protection, even blaming God for the killing of innocents. And even if doubting God’s providence wasn’t expressed in the Bible, the world itself provides plenty of evidence that horrible things routinely happen to good people.
Speaking of lamentations, I reread it the other day. And even though it was written roughly two and a half thousand years ago, I couldn’t help but picture Gaza today.2
Verses from Lamentations 2, in which the author cries out to God.
11 My eyes fail from weeping,
I am in torment within;
my heart is poured out on the ground
because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint
in the streets of the city.
・・・
21 “Young and old lie together
in the dust of the streets;
my young men and young women
have fallen by the sword.
You have slain them in the day of your anger;
you have slaughtered them without pity.
22 “As you summon to a feast day,
so you summoned against me terrors on every side.
In the day of the Lord’s anger
no one escaped or survived;
those I cared for and reared
my enemy has destroyed.”
Heroes, champions, saviors, messiahs, anointed ones
Sometimes we believe that the help we’re looking for, the answer to our prayers of anguish or anger or need, will come in the form of a messiah, an anointed leader chosen to set things right once and for all. Even if we don’t believe that savior was chosen by God but merely elected by the People, we still love our heroes.
I don’t know if this is true in every culture, but contemporary Americans definitely have a strong affinity for that mythical notion that a hero will come along to save the day. Just look at the popularity of Marvel movies. Not every one of the highest-grossing movies in America is about a superhero, but most of them are.
And of course, if you’re going to have a heroes, you also need villains.
Donald Trump is perfect for America
He’s perfect because he plays both roles—hero and villain—with 100% commitment. He serves both halves of our country. Playing the hero, he tells us all the things he will do to save us—especially older, White men who are terrified of losing their privileged status. He names for them a whole slew of bad actors he will vanquish. It’s the dirty, illegal immigrants trying to steal America away from us. It’s all the minorities who have gotten too uppity. It’s the women who have forgotten their place. It’s the gays turning all our children into transvestites. It’s the bleeding-heart liberals who, in their sniveling self-hating guilt, are ready to hand over America to all these unworthy groups of people who used to be firmly under the White boot.
And of course, for the other half of America, Trump plays the villain with farcical prowess. His messaging is nothing more than strings of sound-bite insults. His executive orders are meant to cause more damage and chaos than the media—let alone average Americans—can possibly absorb. He’s like the little toddler on a tear, gleefully wreaking havoc and drawing as much attention to himself in every situation as he can. But he’s also the sly fox, robbing the American people through regressive tax policies and schemes to sell off whole sections of government oversight to the highest bidders.
His offensive attack on American democracy is blitzkrieg meant to overwhelm his opponents into a stupor of despair. By rapidly and viciously attacking everything we hold dear, he hopes to leave us feeling impotent, unsure of where to even start fighting back.
Here’s the thing though: those shock and awe tactics only work short-term. They’re not sustainable, and they also have the disadvantage of pissing everyone off! Yes, they can and will do an incredible amount of damage, but once we all recover a bit from the shock of being punched in the face, we’re going to start taking swings of our own.
We don’t need another hero. It’s our damned job to take care of ourselves.
So, God won’t help us. In fact, a close-but-failed assassination attempt even convinced many awe-struck Americans that God was actively protecting the old villain. And the Democratic party is currently incapable of putting forth a candidate inspiring enough to unite the American populace against him. Even when we have had a Democrat in the Oval Office, we’ve still got way too many politicians on both sides of the aisle who have been bought by the billionaires.
The truth is, no one is coming to save us. It will keep getting worse until we recognize that what America needs is us, its people, doing our job of self-governance. We can’t keep handing over the reigns of power to people who promise to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.
What does that mean, practically? It means we have to pay attention and get involved. Not everywhere, but damn! At least somewhere! Instead of responding to the pain of American inequality and corruption by distancing, distracting, entertaining, or numbing ourselves, it’s time for us to clean ourselves up and go to work.
I don’t even know exactly what that means yet. I’m sure it looks different for each of us, depending on what fight we have the energy and passion to sustain. But I do know this. If we don’t start doing our job, we can’t expect anyone else to do it for us.
Or, more likely, maybe they just like tune and think it’s fun to sing. (It kind of is.) I’ve learned many churchgoers don’t really think much about theology, just like many voters don’t think much about policy.
It could had just as easily been written by German Jews in WWII, Cambodians in 1970s, Rwandans in 1990s, Iraqis in the early 2000s, or Ukrainians today. Were there not righteous people in all these places?
Beautiful words my fellow organism.