A Vote to Save Trump's Soul

Unlike most of the earnestly progressive siblings in my denomination, I have a rather vigorous sense of Hell.  I've expounded on that elsewhere, so I won't get into that here, other than to say that I make no distinctions between God's love, God's wrath, and God's justice.  The cup we pour out is the cup we receive, after all, and against that measure, the current Republican candidate is in a world of trouble.

Donald J. Trump has already made American Christian discourse harsher, crueler, and more selfish, stripping grace, kindness, and wisdom from countless churches.   The crass brassy transaction of his relationship with evangelicalism has driven millions from the faith, as empty platitudes, flagrant lies, and the naked hunger for power have supplanted the Gospel.  

He has undercut the most fundamental blessing of our republic, subverting the Founder's intent for a nation in which leaders are freely elected, and where where power changes hands peaceably.

His anti-Christian nationalism has slandered millions of Latino migrants, 80% of whom are hermanos y hermanas en Christo.  He would turn America into a walled Jericho, into an inhospitable Sodom.  His misbegotten Abraham Accords "fixed" the Middle East by conveniently pretending the Israel/Palestine issue didn't exist, setting the stage for the unprecedented chaos and bloodshed of this last year.  Well, to be fair, it's precedented by millennia of strife in that benighted region, but you know what I mean.

But my deepest concern, honestly, are the tens or hundreds of millions who will suffer if he is elected again.  These are the souls that will starve, suffer, or be forced from their homes and lands because of his refusal to acknowledge our rapidly changing climate.  His flagrant quid pro quo with the oil and gas industries, coupled with his bizarre demonization of everything that would both allow us to adapt and become more energy self-reliant?  They've become pseudo-religious dogma on the far-right now, a bitter, unbiblical, and demonic creed-of-greed that will contribute to actually unprecedented human suffering.

Donald is aware of exactly none of this.  It doesn't even register.

He's a worldly man, after all, utterly unspiritual, as one would be as a Child of Mammon.  A little boy raised in a temple of gold will grow into a big man who couldn't care less about heavenly or eternal things.  And sure, yes, there's grace for all, but grace has to be freely received.  It is for all who repent.  He's great at doubling down, and has no use for repentance.  Repentance implies you were wrong, after all, and he is never ever wrong.

Yet despite all of this, Donald J. Trump is a child of God.  He knows not what he's doing.  I do not desire to maximize his suffering.  I do not wish him harm.  Though he is my enemy, I love him, because I do what Jesus tells me to do.

If he wins the upcoming election, he will receive the worldly power he desires.  But he will also reap the fruits of his actions once given power, and that...insofar as I can honestly see it...imperils his immortal soul.  It's the dark bargain of all who lead, of all who take on the mantle of worldly power, but for Donald, it's a particularly dangerous thing.  

Given power, Trump will pour out a cup of bitterness for himself, a cup as deep as the oceans, as deep as the night sky.

Don't vote against him because you hate him.  

Vote against him because you love him.  Because if he wins?  And God is just?

Lord have mercy on his soul.

Songs of Void and Emptiness

As I reflected on the violence of organic life yesterday, and how oddly incompatible it is with the love of God and enemy, I found myself looking upwards into the refracted blue of the sky and thinking about all that which is not life.

Creation itself is mostly nothing. Even I, as I write this, am mostly nothing. Yeah, I'm an organic life form. But if you drill down to the atomic and subatomic level, the physical form that is currently typing this contains far more emptiness than neutrons and electrons. The keyboard onto which this is typed, for all of it's clackity solidity, is also mostly nothing. But we miss this, because our perception is so limited.

As we look out into the immensity of the cosmos, that emptiness finally strikes us. It is at a scale that we cannot grasp, of a vastness of temporal and spatial measure that goes well beyond our ability to conceptualize. We can get a bit of it, through metrics and analogies. But the reality of it is well beyond the capacity of our minds to grasp.

And it isn't just empty of mass. It's empty of measurable feeling. It is, to us, both terrible and beautiful...but is completely oblivious of those categories. Love and hatred and loss and joy are not words that have any relevance to the lives of stars, or in the aeons over which a nebula dissipates. Though the mechanics of physics govern this immensity, and they can be grasped rationally, those natural laws are not themselves "reasoned." They simply are.

The resultant interplay of those forces also cannot be meaningfully described in terms of interpersonal or social morality. When tectonic plates shift, and a city crumbles or vast waves scour the land, and hundreds of thousands die, it is not malicious. Or cruel. Or hateful. It just is. When atmospheric conditions produce intense tornadic activity, and a town is razed, it is not that creation is feeling peevish, or is angry with the town for not being tougher on crime. It simply is what it is.

The vastness of the heavens and the interplay of matter and energy aren't moral or ethical. The music of the spheres is atonal, jarring, and disinterested in the needs of it's audience.

This poses an interesting paradox to the contemplative person of faith. Why?

Because when one spends time emptying self of self, and letting awareness of all things silence the endless internal jabbering of thought for a while, when you return from that peak state you return changed. But you are changed in a way that does not seem to reflect the great cool amorality of physics. Mystics are not hard-nosed pragmatists, or mechanistically utilitarian in their approach to other creatures. It has a rather different effect.

Confronted with creation's vast, near-chaotic dynamism, one becomes calm. Immersed in it's amorality, other beings suddenly matter more. After embracing that which knows no care or love, deep compassion for others is stirred. It is...paradoxical.

St. Augustine once famously called creation the First Book. As he and Calvin both affirmed, it's a nearly impossible book to read and comprehend...thus the need for our sacred texts to guide our understanding.

But perhaps it's not a book the way the Bible is a book, written in symbol. Perhaps it's more like a song, which is best understood not through analysis and deconstruction and debate, but by simply being still and listening.