Forgive Them
They Do Not Know What They Have Done
Well readers, all I can say is I guess I am naïve. I still genuinely believe everything I wrote last week. No election, not even this one, is of eternal spiritual significance. God is sovereign over everything, so ultimately, all things will work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purposes (Romans 8:28). But I had a good feeling in my heart that Kamala Harris would win. Like all of us, she is a human who would not have been able to be completely faithful to a biblical standard of righteousness, but at least our country would be led by someone who has genuine compassion for people other than herself and wouldn’t undermine the way of Jesus in everything she says and does. I knew all the predictions that the election would be close, but since 2016, I have learned to be skeptical of polls. I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and I was shocked that he won via the electoral college despite all of his racist, misogynistic and crude remarks which I am sure would have ended the campaign of any other candidate, but somehow didn’t affect Donald Trump. I also felt embarrassed to call myself Christian when I learned that 81 percent of my fellow white evangelicals voted for him. For a brief time, I felt a sense of shock, of mourning on behalf of our country. But because he did not win the popular vote, I could console myself with the belief that technically, most of my fellow countrymen were decent people. After a couple days, I was able to pick myself up and carry on with life, and join those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe when campaigning was over and the reality of actually being president hit him, he would be humbled, and he would grow into the position. These hopes were quickly dashed, as it seemed we woke up every day to a fresh dose of chaos, dangerous rhetoric or cruelty. I felt a sense of relief on November 7, 2020. Though the election was still disturbingly close, a decisive majority of Americans came to their senses and elected a sane, compassionate adult for president. Maybe our country’s fascination with Donald Trump was like a fever that had broken. Then January 6 would prove it hadn’t. Even as the pandemic trauma gradually faded into the rear-view mirror under competent, adult leadership, Donald Trump never faded from the news cycle, and everyone I talked to seemed exhausted. Surely when the rubber met the road and people stared at his name on their ballot, they would remember the chaos and trauma his first administration wrought, his campaign rhetoric that was even more violent, crude and unhinged than it was in 2016 or 2020, the warnings from people who worked in his first administration that he admired fascist dictators, and there would be no guardrails this time around, they would not be able to vote for him. But they did, and this time, he even won the popular vote, making it a fully legitimate win. So I woke up Wednesday morning to a déjà vu feeling, my innocent faith in the goodness of most people called into question.
The prayer guide I mentioned last week had three parts, and Wednesday was supposed to be dedicated to prayers for our political enemies. But that morning, my parents and I weren’t ready for that. We vacillated between sadness and anger, even ruminating about how much we were looking forward to seeing Trump supporters getting what they deserve, when his policies end up hurting them. As a writer, I also felt discouraged, not so much for myself but on behalf of the talented scholars, journalists and Christian activists whose blogs I follow. I am not fond of social media and am too introverted to be an effective marketer of my writing by appearing on podcasts or doing speaking engagements, so while I am grateful to all 18 of you subscribers, I never expected my writing to make a difference in the outcome of this election. I write because I sense God calling me to write, and I trust that somehow, someday, He will use it to reach someone. But I grieved for scholars, reporters and Christian activists whose blogs have thousands of followers, who practically drove themselves to exhaustion in the months leading up to the election touring the country trying to be a prophetic voice, begging Americans to follow their better angels. Ultimately, none of their efforts made a difference, and it briefly made me wonder if the very act of writing was pointless. But we cannot “become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). The prophetic books are a case in point that God does not judge us by the results of our efforts. That is out of our control. He judges us on our obedience to his call on our lives. I also remembered that if the written word had no power, authoritarian leaders all through history wouldn’t find it necessary to ban books or persecute journalists. I don’t want to be overly dramatic. For the time being, writers don’t have to worry about outright persecution in this country. But the same cannot be said for writers in Russia whose leader Donald Trump admires, and the Washington Post’s decision to cancel their endorsement of Kamala Harris was alarming to me. I pray that if persecution comes to these shores, I will find the courage to speak the truth through the written word as my act of resistance.
But on Saturday, I felt ready to go through the prayer guide. Loving our enemies doesn’t mean we cannot be angry. In fact, Scripture encourages us to be honest with God about how we feel toward our enemies (Psalm 109). We just cannot allow ourselves to linger in this anger. Otherwise, we are no different from the world to which we are called to be salt and light. Even Pagans, tax collectors—and loyal Trump supporters—are capable of loving those who love them, and being kind to those that are kind to them (Matthew 5:46-47). Not only that, but when we overcome evil with good, we metaphorically heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies (Proverbs 25:22, Romans 12:20-21). For a modern-day example of what Paul meant by this, I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to this radical love is why television coverage of Civil Rights marches resonated so powerfully, even drawing white allies to the movement. If the black protestors had fought back when they were beaten, sprayed with firehoses, mauled by dogs, the world would have just seen a riot with the perpetrators indistinguishable from the victims. But when these protestors remained as innocent as doves even as they were beaten and mauled, public opinion for millions of Americans turned against these Southern police officers and Ku-Klux Klan members, and inspired many white allies, especially college students to join the cause of these protestors. And occasionally, perpetrators of evil who experience this radical love are moved to repent and come to Christ. Thus if I am really serious about rescuing people from the false teachings of Christian Nationalism, I must love my political enemies. Otherwise my pleas for them to follow the true teachings of Christ will have no credibility.
Figuring out how to do this in practice will be an ongoing process that will take more than this one blog post to sort out. But I think a good place to start is by contemplating the words Jesus spoke when his enemies crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). This verse came into my mind on Thursday when I read this article detailing how all the efforts of honest reporters who tried to warn the country of the dangerous implications of a second Trump administration were no match against the right-wing media empire which traffics in disinformation and fear. In some small towns and rural areas of the country, right-wing propaganda outlets have even taken over local news. Even when balanced media coverage is available, vulnerable people—the lonely, the elderly, the cognitively impaired—can get drawn in by this propaganda and lose their ability to discern the truth. On top of that, many Americans get their news exclusively from social media. Since acquiring Twitter (X), Elon Musk has made no effort to crack down on bots produced by foreign adversaries seeking to divide us against each other, such that the day after the election, Twitter users reported a dramatic drop-off in followers, as the bots, having accomplished their evil mission, went away.
As for the black men and Latino men who on the surface seemed to vote against their own best interests, Jonathan Walton offers an enlightening perspective in this live podcast recorded on Wednesday. He believes that whiteness is not just about skin tone. It is an ideology based on a hierarchy of race, gender and class that even minorities can be drawn to in search of acceptance. So a black or Latino man might vote for Trump in search of acceptance based on their masculinity. Donald Trump clearly distinguishes “us” from “them”, and Latino men, due to their history of colonization, are susceptible to a mindset that says if they double down on toxic masculinity, patriarchy, vilify LGBTQ people, they will be treated better and not find themselves on the wrong side of an oppressive system. They will soon realize however that this insecurity was exploited to win their vote, and that authoritarians like Donald Trump don’t actually care about them one bit. This doesn’t mean excusing the sins of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, or resentment. But perhaps loving our enemies starts with an attitude of forgiveness which simply means letting go of any bitterness, or in my case, a sense of moral superiority that dehumanizes Trump voters, and acknowledging that as a college-educated, white woman living in an affluent suburb, I take my privilege for granted. As unimaginable as it seems from my pedestal of privilege, it is possible there are many Americans who need to be forgiven because they have been led astray by wolves in sheep’s clothing in the form of right-wing news outlets, and social media algorithms, and do not yet realize the grievous mistake they made. It is only through a posture of humility and mercy when Trump voters inevitably get hurt by his policies that these lost sheep have any hope of being rescued. If Jesus could forgive those who crucified him, I can forgive my political enemies.
That Reminds me of a Song: All week, I have been thinking about the opening of Saturday Night Live after the 2016 election, when the actress that played Hillary Clinton sang Leonard Cohen’s Halleluia, and then sounding genuinely sad but resolute, said, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.” You wouldn’t think of Saturday Night Live, and crying in the same sentence, but I found my eyes getting teary that night, as this opening so beautifully captured the shock and sadness those of us who saw Donald Trump for who he was, were feeling. And though Saturday Night Live is not known for its reverence of religion, the decision to sing this song was poignant from a religious perspective as well, a beautiful reminder that no matter how tumultuous and uncertain the times we are living through, and even though it feels as if all is going wrong now, we will one day stand before the Lord of song, and sing Halleluia.