Immediately following the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the religious chatter about Trump got waaaaay more intense.
His supporters felt that this near miss marked him as protected by God, that it was a sign that he was a necessary part of God's plan for America. Like King David, like Cyrus of Persia, Trump is the anointed one, the vessel of the Divine intent. Trumpist theology has always had a divine-right ring about it, which...given that his supporters are essentially monarchists...shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Others had very different ideas, ones that seem a little closer to the reality of who Trump is. Among some fringe communities of evangelicals who haven't missed that Trump is the exact opposite of Jesus in every way, the failed assassination attempt and the wound to Trump's ear fulfilled the terms of Revelation 13:3. "There it is," they said. "There's the head wound, and the wondering world!" Trump is, they suggest, the Little Horn, the adversary of Christ, whose amorality, worldliness, and pathological falsehood marks him as the Antichrist. The end times are at hand!
Both are...off.
Trump's "faithful" supporters are off, because, c'mon. Christ's purposes are never served by lies and bullying. Christ's purposes are never served by showing cruelty to the stranger, or by refusing shelter to a fellow Christian. Ever. Not ever. Period. The Gospel must be expressed in our every action, and the dark logics of your theological consequentialism can be used to excuse any evil. Sure, he's done what he promised. But just because the devil fulfills his end of the bargain doesn't mean you haven't sold your soul.
As the author of the definitive book on Trump's Antichrist nature, I might seem closer to the latter camp. At least the folks who are freaked out about him have the advantage of not being bamboozled by Trump's transactional schtick. And I will admit, the whole head wound thing is a little creepy, as is the depth to which the American faithful now stand in Trump's thrall.
The challenge, though, is that none of that matters. The question, for Christians, is never about the details of the end times, or about the mechanics of messianic fulfillment. Jesus was really, really specific about that. Don't speculate about those things, he said. Don't trust anyone who speculates about it.
Our task, as Christians, is not to worry about when it all comes down. Because if you're a Christian, if you've committed yourself to being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, again: none of that matters. None of it. If you're claimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the end times have already arrived for you.
The Christian has already stepped over to a different way of life, one that manifests itself in the values and ethos that Jesus lived and taught. It doesn't matter where we are in the scheme of things. We must live, right now, as if that time were fulfilled. My moral commitments are the same, no matter where we are in the arc of history. Faced with an cruel emperor, a totalitarian state, a flagrant charlatan, or a decadent mammonist culture, none of that changes.
Love neighbor. Love enemy. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Show hospitality to the stranger. Speak the truth, and show grace. Refuse the sword, and turn your back on the sweet poison of wealth. This is the basic value-set of discipleship, no matter when, no matter what.
When we get lost in wild end-times speculation, we too easily lose sight of that discipled moral agency. We start living in a world of abstractions and phantasms, rather than in the reality of our day-to-day choices. We forget both our Christian freedom and our Christian duty.
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