AMAC 2020 Man of the Year

I have been reading a harmony of the Gospels lately to refocus on the question: what would Jesus do (WWJD)? As I was reading a passage in John’s Gospel this morning, I noticed something interesting. When His enemies revealed their supposed reasons for hating Him, He didn’t correct them. One of the things that troubled the Jews was that they traced Jesus back to Galilee where they assumed He was born. They knew the Scripture foretold the Messiah’s birthplace as Bethlehem, David’s city. It would have been a relatively simple thing for Jesus to correct their misunderstanding; perhaps there would even be census records of His birth since the gospel records that as the reason for Joseph and Mary’s trip there. His stepsiblings might have attested to the Bethlehem birth as well, assuming their parents had shared it with them.

Instead of attempting to correct his detractors, Jesus took an entirely different tack: He pointed to His works and the authority behind His words. The Jews in power would have liked to hear what rabbi Jesus had studied under so that they could assess His trustworthiness. Anyone who possessed the kind of in-depth knowledge of the Scripture that Jesus displayed was assumed to have studied under a known teacher. The simple folk didn’t have deep understanding; they relied on their teachers, the scribes and Pharisees to interpret the Scriptures for them. Jesus sailed directly against that current with His challenging teachings. He claimed His authority to do so came directly from God.

I am going to make an analogy that will be upsetting to anyone who does not read very carefully. (Perhaps even some careful readers will choose to be upset.) Let me be clear: I am not making a comparison between two men; I am saying that circumstances the two men faced were strikingly similar. For example, Donald Trump’s detractors tried every possible type of attack against him from the moment he announced his candidacy for President. The early attacks focused on the fact that he had no political experience. He had not been trained, as it were, in the ins and outs of Washington. Trump countered with the explanation that he had proven very successful at running big businesses, and he rightly suggested that there is no bigger business in the United States than the federal government.

The Left discounted Trump’s comparison of government with business, yet when he was ultimately elected in 2016, he proceeded to become the best friend business had had since Ronald Reagan. He secured massive tax relief, rolled back stifling regulations, and the country saw an unprecedented recovery from the Obama recession with increasing employment, new business start-ups and rising personal income. Inflation-adjusted wage growth averaged $3.20 under President Obama’s administration; in three years, Trump’s number was $6.90. His conviction that helping business helped everyone proved correct.

In the same way that Jesus’ detractors tried to keep the people bound under failed religious traditions, Trump’s enemies continued to insist that the only way to improve the lot of the people was with larger, more intrusive government. President Trump denied this flatly; he was “politically incorrect” in many of his published pronouncements while his policies proved to be correct politically and economically. Jesus also used rhetoric that was uncomforting to His enemies, but which carried the ring of truth and results of eternal significance. Both stood up to their detractors and continued to do what they knew was the right thing to do.

Jesus enemies accused Him of not following their interpretation of the Law. He rightly demonstrated that their law had been subjected to so much revision over the years that it no longer represented the will of the Father in Heaven. The Left tried to apply their revisionist view of the Constitution as an attack on President Trump. He steadfastly stuck to the strict constructionist view that most closely follows the intent of the Founding Fathers. President Trump repaired much of the damage that had been done by the previous administration to the rights guaranteed by the First, Second and Fourth Amendments. He also placed judges on the federal courts who would protect our Constitutional rights for years to come.

Jesus was regularly upbraided for His failure to follow accepted social customs. His willingness to associate with prostitutes and other sinners brought loud accusations of His lack of suitability as the Messiah. He was even branded as demon possessed. His enemies could not have imagined a more despicable person. In Trump’s case, some of his behavior prior to taking office was despicable. It is my opinion that since we don’t elect a Messiah but a President, some personal failings can be overlooked if they don’t reflect on the man’s ability to do his job. The hypocrisy of the Left in accusing Trump of things that they regularly let slide in their chosen ones reveals their true intentions. They don’t care how one behaves as long as he is following their playbook. That echoes what the Pharisees thought about Jesus.

One last point of comparison strikes me: Donald Trump took some of the most vitriolic beatings in the press of any President in recent memory. The Left didn’t stop at attacking him personally; they attacked his wife (a most gracious first lady) and his children. The mud slinging and conspiratorial strategies they used throughout Trump’s Presidency were absorbed by the man who only occasionally responded with late-night Tweets or a few speeches he made in his defense. When it came to the most egregious slight of all, the obvious attempts to alter 2020 election results, he stepped down graciously when it became clear that the system was so artfully rigged against him.

I am not trying to make Donald Trump out to be Christ; nor am I suggesting that losing a presidential election is on a par with being crucified. However, metaphorically speaking, President Trump was crucified almost daily for four years. The ridiculous impeachment after he was already out of office shows how hateful his enemies had become. I stand with the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) in their naming of Donald Trump as the 2020 man of the year. If you believe in the sovereignty of God, you may agree with AMAC’s closing statement in the article explaining their choice: “Donald Trump’s role as President of the United States of America is nothing short of God using him for His glory and His good.”

God uses every human being for His purposes, good men and bad. Consider Pharaoh or Caiaphas alongside Moses and Jesus. It is my hope that the “death” of the Trump presidency will have a similar effect on the people of the United States as the death of their Savior had on the Jews. It wasn’t until after Jesus died that some of God’s people realized what they had missed. Donald Trump had many character flaws that disqualify him from full-fledged WWJD alignment to be sure, but his unrelenting efforts to make America great again must be recognized. He was the best ally conservative Christians have had in Washington in many years. I pray that 2022 will bring the first wave of revival to be followed by a tsunami in 2024.