One of my central arguments for a Trump presidency was the Supreme Court. But it’s not because I find the Court some inerrant body operating in harmony with the divine council. In fact, I find much of the way the Court operates troubling. There is a vicious cycle of punting fundamental decisions to the future and as a Legislative Branch of Government, I’d rather like to see unconstitutional laws overturned in 3…2…1. “Stare decisis” can go to hell, for all I care, if it doesn’t comport with God’s laws. And Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a prime example of how such perturbing things need reasonable judges to make reasonable arguments even if they lack the kind of theocratic starting point.
I think we are all in agreement that such arguments yesterday were incredibly favorable toward banning abortion in Mississippi after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Ideally, 1973 will also enter the history books as a year where moral courage bid adieu, and 2021 resolved to see moral fervor back through unlikely judges. Judges, might I add, brought by the tanned man.
I return, however, to my original point: Trump was a good thing for this country and I pity those who could not share the corporate outrage or those who are too tired to fight. Trump was a fighter; the kind of pugilist that entered the ring and started throwing punches everywhere and out of sheer “luck” ended up hitting a couple of really precious artifacts of leftist ideologies.
The spectators were left speechless because they thought that no one had the courage to enter the ring against established dogma. But he did it! He did it on Twitter; he did it on national television; he did it on debates; he did it in electing judges; he did it in protecting the rights of religious institutions, and he did it in various other ways.
Now, of course, we can sit down and talk about how the match was pretty chaotic and how he ended up hitting a few of us, and how his coaches were pretty corrupt as well, but the end result is that we are sitting fairly close to seeing some fairly monumental things about to happen in this country in 2021.
Think about it: these last two years have been the most magnified sight into the devious and devilish devices of Democrat powers. They have sought to endanger our health, history, and hope. They have tortured the American conscience by putting friends against friends at the Thanksgiving table; they have filled the cup of wrath by instilling fear as a commodity and currency. Democrats offer misery and betrayal to morality and classical mores. There is no way–unless one pushes the gymnastic hermeneutic really far–to see Democratic policies as nothing more than outrageous attempts to build Babel on the broken and rotten wood of Genesis 11. This was the year that leftists argued that children ought to obey their masters even though they stifle our speech, our humanity, and our bodies through mandates and madness.
But God loves to shock us back into hope. He works with broken Trumps to achieve the good. He takes a notoriously unhealthy specimen of morality–though far healthier than the alternative–and uses him to offer a few good men on the Court. And even assuming that this whole thing goes awry, even if somehow things remain as is–which I do not believe–we have still made pagans squirm with fear of the mere possibility that babies could live. In fact, as of now, if Roe is gutted, the Democratic-led Congress is unlikely to have the votes to counteract it legislatively. We should be hopeful moving into 2022. We should always be hopeful in season and out of season. But it seems that certain seasons offer some divine comedy, and I hope to see God’s humor thrive over the affairs of men.
When the whole 2016 business dawned upon us, I argued in a long post that Christians have one fundamental task in this world: to use the resources he has to provide the best outcome possible in a fallen world. Sometimes it doesn’t look the exact way we think it should. Sometimes our leader breaks too many things when he should have only broken three. But still, we rejoice over the specificity of judgment on the unrighteous and blessings on the righteous.
We are somewhat naive to think we can operate on the basis of Benedictine order. God is perfect, but he is not a perfectionist, as Doug Wilson once stated. Purists live in monasteries, and as a Protestant, me-no-can-do.
We need more Bonifaces to shatter the wisdom of this world and break a few extra tables. Christians should see the long game and see every win as a movement of mustard seeds being planted in our society. The kingdom grows slowly, which does not mean–for the ideologues–that we lose slowly, but that we move slowly like parabolic plants, leavening the whole world. And while the Trump era is done–and should be–I am grateful he fought the right people and afflicted the comfortable, even if we had to sit back and cringe a time or ten.
Great post, as always. I particularly like your Wilson quote of ‘God is pure but not a perfectionist.’ I’m always saddened by the way some Christians say they can’t support a president who has the moral shortcomings of Donald Trump and therefore didn’t vote for him. I wish they’d just say ‘I’m not going to vote at all’ since the alternative is so frightening. Whacked out liberals love this as it makes their job taking over that much easier. We need to learn to settle for incremental victories–such as Trump did changing the complexion of SCOTUS–and then build on them.