We’re in the early weeks of Lent, the 40 days when Christians are called to rededicate themselves to good — and the Trump administration seems to be having a good time making its war with Iran seem like a bunch of tweens playing a game of “Call of Duty.”
Where Jesus called on believers to go through life as meekly as possible, the White House keeps pumping out social media posts mixing footage of American forces blowing up the Iranian regime with everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to Iron Man to “Grand Theft Auto.” While Proverbs warned “every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who loves to flash his bad tattoos that reference the Crusades — gives superlative-drenched speeches on the supposed glories of this war that make him sound more bloodthirsty than Count Dracula.
Even though Christ mandated that people not loudly pray in public “like the hypocrites,” President Trump gladly let a gaggle of pastors lay hands over him in the Oval Office this week as one intoned God “continue to give our President the strength that he needs to lead our nation as we come back to one nation under God.”
Which God: Yahweh or Trump?
During last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, the president bragged that because of him, “religion’s back now hotter than ever before.” Perhaps the most un-Christian man to ever serve as commander in chief has continually wrapped himself in the mantle of Jesus — and too many Christians have ignored the Good Book’s repeated warnings against false prophets and cheered him on.
Flannery O’Connor could have written an entire novel on Christian hucksters just from Year One of the second coming of the Trump administration.
As the Iran war ratchets up with no end in sight, this devotion to Trump is veering into idolatry.
Pastor Greg Laurie — most famous for holding Harvest Crusade revivals in Southern California for the past generation — wrote online that Trump’s Iran campaign “is cause for us to sit up and pay attention” because he feels it lines up with End Times prophecy about the Middle East descending into war just before the Second Coming. The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation revealed it has received hundreds of complaints from troops about their superiors claiming that what’s going on is biblically ordained.
Meanwhile, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that what’s happening “is a religious war” that “will set the course of the Middle East for a thousand years” — the exact time period that the Book of Revelation stated Christ will reign until Satan returns. Some Trump supporters have even compared their savior to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who freed the Israelites from the yolk of the Babylonians and of whom the Book of Isaiah called God’s “anointed” and would “subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor.”
The Bible is not all kumbaya. But from the Old Testament to the New, it consistently preaches for the faithful to humble themselves, to help the poor and downtrodden. Trump’s version of Christianity instead preaches no mercy for those against him, demands followers exalt him above everything, celebrates the gaudy instead of the godly.
This Lent is magnifying his apostasy like never before.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speak during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday in Washington.
(Konstantin Toropin / Associated Press)
It’s a time to fast from our excesses; Trump continues to push forth a White House redesign that will make the Palace of Versailles look as flashy as a mud hut. Those of us who partake in Lent are asked to repent of our sins; Trump is doubling down on them like they’re McDonald’s fries. We are supposed to reflect on our wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness from the Almighty and those we wronged — has Trump ever done that?
We’re also supposed to practice almsgiving and assist those less fortunate than ourselves as a way of honoring Christ, who pointed out that giving so it costs you is the only way to give. Trump has always brayed that he’s ultimately looking out for the common man — but instead of helping the millions of people whom his economy was already leaving behind before the Iran campaign, he’s shrugging off their woes and asking Americans to buckle up and weather price spikes and simply believe in him.
Or is that Him?
Conservative Christian leaders have continually landed on the wrong side of American history, from slavery to imperialism, Jim Crow to women’s rights. That’s why it’s not surprising — but still disappointing — that a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this year found 69% of white evangelicals think Trump has done a good job. Fifty-two percent of white Catholics feel the same, compared with just 23% of Latino Catholics, even though Pope Leo XIV has consistently decried American foreign and domestic policy.
Lent also is the time that Christians remember that the pain of Christ’s death leads to the hope that is Easter. That’s why for this Lent, may Christians repent of Trump like never before.
War has always been a time for propaganda, of demonizing the enemy and pumping up your side. It is a sad, tragic affair, with death and carnage and endless mourning. Children die. War is not a thing to be celebrated, even if it were necessary. And there’s a big if around this latest one, even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei deserved his downfall and Iranians in their country and abroad rightfully celebrate.
But history’s greatest warriors know — to quote the conclusion of the Oscar-winning biopic “Patton” — that glory is fleeting. Trump, Hegseth and their ilk are not them. They are the men that Psalms asked God to deliver us from, the warmongers who “imagine mischiefs in their heart” and “continually” seek violence. To see how this administration and its supporters are preening right now reminds me of what Johnny Cash once sung: sooner or later, God‘s gonna cut you down.
Let’s just hope the rest of us are spared when that happens. If you pray, please do. (And not to Trump).
