Assassination

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

As a rule, I don’t write on Saturday nights. I chill out with my family, stay up and watch some Hallmark Channel with my wife, and go to bed early enough to be fresh for Sunday morning worship.

Tonight, however, I can’t relax. I can think of nothing but today’s apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan or follower of Mr. Trump. He did not get my vote in 2016 or 2020 and he will not get my vote in 2024. Here, I will summarize, in brief, my reasons in two points.

First, I believe that too many Americans (and Christians) imagine presidents as their leaders. I have a Leader who knows me and who gives me the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Insofar as I follow my Leader, I am able to serve my family, church, and community. I don’t need or want someone in Washington to be my leader. I want neither Biden nor Trump (nor anyone other politician) to claim me as their follower. I follow one Leader.

Second, call me an old-fashioned conservative, but the office of the President of the United States does not belong to the man or woman who occupies it; it belongs to We the People of the United States. The president is our employee. He or she works for us. Every four years, we hire or re-hire someone to preside over the executive branch of the federal government. We do not crown a king or anoint a high priest.

We hire a chief bureaucrat, an employee we think will meet at least the minimum requirements of administering the responsibilities of the office. An office that is responsible to We the People–all of us.

As an employee, the president is responsible for administering the laws of the land in a way that apply equally to every citizen. Those who did not vote for the president are equal under the law to those who voted for her or him. Those who did not vote at all are equal under the law to those who did. Those who do not serve in the military are equal under the law to those do serve. Those who are new citizens are equal under the law to those whose families have been here for generations. Those who are not of the president’s ethnicity or religion are equal under the law to those who are. Those who give money to the president’s political opponents are equal under the law to those who give millions of dollars to the president’s campaign. This is what it means when a president takes an oath to protect the Constitution. He or she is taking an oath to ensure that every American is equal under the law insofar as he or she administers that law.

The bottom line for me, when choosing a president, is who will do that best for 333 million “bosses.” Even when the vast majority of those “bosses” did not directly hire the president with their votes!

The two reasons that I found Trump to be not up to the job in 2016 and 2020 are the same reasons I find him to not be up to the job now.

Again, I’m looking for someone to fill a job that reports to me; I’m not looking for a leader. I’m not looking for “a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19-22). I’ve read my Bible. I know how that ends.

The same two reasons that disqualify Trump are the same two reasons that disqualify Biden. Trump lost me for good in 2016 when he said: “I alone can fix it.” No born-and-bred American (most of all Christian American) should ever believe such a thing from anyone. We should know better. We should want to know better. That statement revealed that Trump did not understand human nature or the United States of America.

But in recent weeks, President Biden has been singing the same “I alone” tune. For a long time, I did not believe him fit for another four years in office, but his hubris and stubbornness in recent weeks closed the case for me.

If Americans are looking for a leader, neither of these men demonstrate the mature self-awareness and the courage to recognize that other men and women can do the job better than them at this point. They have forced their would-be employers–the American people–into the dilemma of choosing between two declining men who believe the same delusion: “I alone can fix it.”

I may write a lot more about this as I process the choice I have to make in November. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never felt more frustrated and helpless in my life. I believe in representative democracy, but the options before us in this presidential election are proof that the way we’re doing it is not working anymore. We need reform in a bad way.

I’m afraid more of my fellow Americans are giving up on representative democracy altogether. Rather than “reform,” they are resorting to things that will destroy the very foundations of our country.

This is what has me shook after shots were fired in Butler, Pennsylvania, today.

Sharing power with opponents is the very essence of our political system. It does not work without that power-sharing arrangement. When we refuse to share power with those who are different from ourselves, we are as un-American as we can be. When we take it a step further and attempt to take our opponents’ power and access to power by force, we are a spark in the dry tinder of a wildfire that will burn us all alive.

What keeps me up at night is that it seems more Americans are now willing to go there. They would rather see the whole country end than have to share it with “those people.”

In the Gospel of Matthew 13:24-43, Jesus told a parable about weeds growing up with wheat in a field. The farmer would not let his day laborers pull up the weeds, however, because doing so would also pull up the wheat.

Christians who know their Bibles ought to know this principle. To try to “weed out” whoever we consider to be the “bad guys” will cause grave collateral damage to what is good and worth keeping.

But this parable is not about politics; it’s about judgment. As in, there is a Judge. That Judge is just and that Judge will act. Trust the Judge. Wait for the Judge. Only the Judge knows who truly is a weed and who truly is wheat.

An assassin takes it on herself or himself to be both judge and jury. His bullet is not only an affront to the human life it takes, it is an affront to the One who alone may decide who is fit to die and who is fit to live.

But an assassin attacks more than one candidate or official; he or she attacks all the people who wish to choose that candidate or official to work for them. And, in so doing, he or she attacks “We the People” and our Constitution. An assassin’s bullet is the first shot in a war against representative democracy and all who have a stake in it.

This is what shakes me to the core about today. Once we imagine that violence against our opponents is the only way, we are done for. And I do me we. All of us.

I will not vote for Donald Trump, but I will do everything in my power to protect the rights of those who want to vote for him. It’s the most American, most conservative, most Christian thing I can do.