We are in the first weeks of Lent, the 40 days in which Christians are called to rededicate themselves to good, and the Trump administration seems to be having fun making its war with Iran look like a group of preteens playing a game of “Call of Duty.”
While Jesus called believers to live life as docilely as possible, the White House continues to publish social media posts mixing images of U.S. forces blowing up the Iranian regime with everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to Iron Man to “Grand Theft Auto.” While Proverbs warned that “everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who loves to show off his bad tattoos that reference the Crusades, gives speeches full of superlatives about the supposed glories of this war that make him seem more bloodthirsty than Count Dracula.
Although Christ commanded that people not pray out loud in public “like hypocrites,” President Trump gladly allowed a group of pastors to lay hands on him in the Oval Office this week as one intoned God “continue to give our president the strength he needs to lead our nation as we return to one nation under God.”
Which God: Yahweh or Trump?
During last month's National Prayer Breakfast, the president boasted that because of him, “religion is now back stronger than ever.” Perhaps the least Christian man ever to 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 applauded him.
Flannery O'Connor could have written an entire novel about Christian peddlers in just the first year of the second coming of the Trump administration.
As the war with Iran escalates with no end in sight, this devotion to Trump is turning into idolatry.
Pastor Greg Laurie, most famous for holding Harvest Crusade revivals in Southern California over the past generation, wrote online that Trump's Iran campaign “is cause for us to sit up and pay attention” because he feels it aligns with end-times prophecy about the Middle East descending into war just before the Second Coming. The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation revealed that it has received hundreds of complaints from troops that their superiors claim what is happening is biblically ordained.
Meanwhile, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that what is happening “is a religious war” that will “set the course of the Middle East for a thousand years,” the exact time period in which the Book of Revelation claims 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 grip of the Babylonians and whom the Book of Isaiah called God's “anointed one” who would “subdue the nations before him and strip the kings of their armor.”
The Bible is not all kumbaya. But from the Old Testament to the New, he constantly preaches that the faithful humble themselves, that they help the poor and oppressed. Instead, Trump's version of Christianity preaches that there is no mercy for those who stand against him, demands that his followers exalt him above all, celebrates the flashy rather than the pious.
This Lent is magnifying their apostasy like never before.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speak during a news conference at the Pentagon Wednesday in Washington.
(Konstantin Toropin/Associated Press)
It is a time to fast from our excesses; Trump continues to push a redesign of the White House that will make the Palace of Versailles look as gaudy as a mud hut. Those of us who participate in Lent are asked to repent of our sins; Trump is doubling down like McDonald's fries. We are supposed to reflect on our wrongdoings and ask forgiveness from the Almighty and those we wronged. Has Trump ever done that?
We are also supposed to practice almsgiving and help those less fortunate than us as a way of honoring Christ, who noted that giving whatever it costs is the only way to give. Trump has always brayed that he is ultimately looking out for the common man, but instead of helping the millions of people his economy was already leaving behind before the Iran campaign, he is downplaying their problems and asking Americans to buckle up and ride out the price spikes and just believe in him.
Or is it him?
Conservative Christian leaders have continually landed on the wrong side of American history, from slavery to imperialism, from Jim Crow to women's rights. So it's not surprising, but disappointing, that a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this year found that 69% of white evangelicals think Trump has done a good job. Fifty-two percent of white Catholics feel the same way, compared to only 23 percent of Latino Catholics, even though Pope Leo XIV has consistently criticized American domestic and foreign policy.
Lent is also a time when Christians remember that the pain of Christ's death leads to the hope that is Easter. So this Lent, let Christians repent of Trump like never before.
War has always been a time of propaganda, of demonizing the enemy and encouraging oneself. It is a sad and tragic affair, with death, carnage and endless mourning. Children die. War is not something that should be celebrated, even if it were necessary. And there is a big question mark surrounding the latter, including whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei deserved his downfall and Iranians at home and abroad rightly 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 from whom the Psalms asked God to deliver us, the warmongers who “imagine evil in their hearts” and “continually” seek violence. Watching this administration and its supporters strut their stuff right now reminds me of what Johnny Cash once sang: Sooner or later, God will cut you off.
Let's hope the rest of us are saved when that happens. If you pray, please do so. (And not Trump).
