“Life is an ironic bitch.”
This is a direct quote from one of the main characters of a novel series I’ve been writing, “The Eye of the Morning.” As a writer, irony has always stood out to me. It’s everywhere and sometimes it seems to be the very foundation on which life is built and actions are taken. And nowhere has this been more obvious to me than in our current election season.
The rise of Donald Trump this cycle has been both confusing and terrifying to me. I never dreamed that a man so devoid of humanity could ever make it this far. And the fact that he has been so passionately embraced by Evangelicals has been the most confusing. I have been asking myself over and over again how anyone who calls themselves Christian could possibly support this man. After all, isn’t he the antithesis of everything Evangelicals stand for? He’s been married three times, he has five children from three different wives. He’s had so many mistresses that he could fill Trump Tower with them. Out on the campaign trail he speaks like the dragon in Revelation 3, and rather than believe IN God, he thinks he IS God.
Yet that’s where the irony comes in. Donald actually is God; the spitting image of the Evangelical God.
Let’s start at the top:
In the beginning God told Adam and Eve NOT to eat from the tree of knowledge, and Evangelicals have been avoiding knowledge ever since.
~ Ben Tousey
The very first commandment that God ever gave to his followers was that they should avoid knowledge, and Evangelicals have taken this to heart. They adamantly opposed science. Conservopedia calls Einstein’s Theory of Relativity a liberal plot. They deny climate change in the face of overwhelming evidence. They rally to have science thrown out of schools in favor of their own mythologies. In the face of overwhelming new awareness of how our universe works, they choose to remain ignorant.
Then there’s the whole ego thing. Here’s a quote from God:
I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:5
Sound familiar? Trump’s greatest complaint is: “They weren’t nice to me” (regardless of how he has treated them). The most profound example of this is his man crush on Putin. Despite Putin’s animosity for America and human rights, despite his attempt to recover communism, despite his involvement in Syria and his incursion into Crimea, Donald loves him. Why? Because he misunderstood the way Putin used the word “brilliant” when talking about him, and thinks that Putin complimented him.
Exodus 20 of course is both the prologue to— and the Decalogue: what we call the Ten Commandments. These Commandments are where God throws down with Israel, demanding that Israel align themselves ONLY to him. He will “make Israel great again” but they have to “submit” to him without question. And if they hurt his feelings in any way, he’ll exact revenge: even on the children for the sins of the parents.
God is a narcissist and likes to be worshiped… demands to be worshiped. He willingly describes himself as “jealous,” and provides a list of what he’s willing to do to those who don’t think he’s as great as he thinks he is—again, it involves the willingness to punish the children if the parents don’t love him enough.
This is also the attitude of Donald. He is intolerant of others and demands that he be the focus of our attention. Stories are even coming out in the wake of the vice-presidential debate that he is angry at his running mate for performing better than Donny did in his. This is exactly how God feels. Do NOT upstage the diva, or she will CUT you!
Then we have God’s xenophobia and genocidal tendencies as made clear in the book of 1 Samuel:
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
Donald Trump wants to expel nearly eleven million people from the country, uprooting families and destroying lives. Like God, he views everyone who is not like him as an enemy and shows no compassion. Modern Americans find themselves both troubled and frightened by this, but this is the God that Evangelicals embrace: and his tactics are simply God’s way of purifying the land so that they can live under the theocracy they’ve been seeking for generations.
Then of course there’s Donald’s personal life: three wives, five children between the three, and a myriad of mistresses. Aka: Biblical marriage. Like Evangelical God, Donald is a misogynist, and proud of it. A woman’s value is based solely on her ability to provide for the man. If she’s fat, ugly, or old, then she is worthless. Because Donald is the “man,” he gets to decide those characteristics of the woman that are important—regardless of whether or not any of those qualities are present in him.
To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Then there’s the whole “Law and order” thing that Donald so prominently talks about. God also talks law and order—as seen in the Ten Commandments. Yet the laws don’t apply to him.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
Yet these are the very things that Donald does every day. His lies are so pervasive that we can’t even keep up with them. He hires people to work for him, and then refuses to pay them for their services. His three marriages attest to his love of adultery. And once he starts pushing nuclear buttons and starting wars around the globe, people are going to die… millions of people are going to die.
This is Evangelical God: He demands 10 percent of everything you and I make period… His guys at the top are well served but the people at the bottom are struggling and suffering (but because they avoid knowledge, they don’t know why). He literally stole the land of Israel from its original inhabitants. We’ve already seen that he’s comfortable with killing men women children and beast. As to lying, well, God has surrogates who lie for him:
Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee. 1 Kings 22:23
Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people. Jeremiah 4:10
And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet. Ezekiel 14:9
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. 2 Thessalonians 2:11
Let’s not forget God’s stance toward the LGBTQ communities. What does Donald think about them? He can’t even spell LGBTQ. But he has begun adopting Evangelical God’s attitudes toward them.
In essence, Donald Trump is the beast of Revelation 13:
Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.
And here’s where the irony comes in. Evangelicals teach that there will be an antichrist, who will deceive the people. Who will come in the name of God and wreak havoc upon the world. They claim the world will be deceived. Only we’re not. We see Donald who for who he truly is. It’s the Evangelicals, on the other hand, who are being deceived. They are opening their arms wide to embrace this beast, this antichrist, and the reasons are simple. He looks exactly like their own God. Because their God has associated knowledge with evil, they too associate knowledge with evil; and they celebrate Donny’s ignorance. But ultimately, it’s Donald’s embodiment of God’s petty and vindictive nature that has them so excited. If you ever want to bring an Evangelical to orgasm, simply tell them about all the people who are going to suffer, and then going to hell. There’s not a box of Kleenex big enough to clean up after that.
Let’s look at the book of Revelation. God is so vindictive that he’s going to kill large swaths of people, and then bring them back to life so that he can kill them again. Once we truly look at the Evangelicals and their God, their worship of Donald Trump makes perfect sense.