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Sunday, July 21, 2024

Christian Perspectives On The Attempted Assassination Of President Trump: Political Violence, Love, Glory, Courage, And Grace

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  Put Away Your Swords, by Esau McCaulley (Wheaton College; Author, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (2023):

McCaulleyJesus used his final moments with his disciples before the crucifixion to heal his opponent’s ear—and model the way of love.

In the Gospel narratives, a gaggle of soldiers came to arrest Jesus before his crucifixion. Trying to stop them, the apostle Peter brandished a sword to defend Jesus from danger but missed his target, striking one of the soldiers—ironically enough—on the ear. Jesus responded by using one of his final moments in person with his followers to teach them about the dangers of political and religious violence.

Jesus rebuked Peter with a much-quoted line: “Put your sword back in its place … for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matt. 26:52). Violence, Jesus taught, only begets more violence, creating a spiral that can consume individuals, movements, and sometimes even republics.

But Jesus did more than issue a policy statement. He healed the soldier who had come to do him harm (Luke 22:51).

This same soldier and his fellow combatants would continue with the arrest, and Jesus would become a victim of state-sponsored torture and death. The healing, then, was not a commentary on the soldier’s politics. Jesus did not heal because he believed the actions against him were just. The healing was a recognition of his enemy’s humanity, for there are moments to set aside politics and to see our opponents as fellow bearers of the image of God.

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, we find ourselves in one of those moments. Regardless of our party affiliation, it is appropriate to lament the attack, to grieve the passing of the father in the crowd who died defending his family, and to pray for all those impacted by this unjustifiable act of violence.

But for Christians, prayers are the easy part. Being honest about the state of our nation is more difficult. ...

Peter was not the only early believer who used violence. Paul, who wrote a quarter of the New Testament, was involved in the killing of the first Christian martyr, Stephen (Acts 7). Paul’s change of heart occurred while he was on the way to arrest and jail even more of his then-opponents. His encounter with Jesus caused him to reject violence as a means of getting his way, and he spent the rest of his life traveling the Roman Empire to change lives without the aid of human weapons. He never converted a single person through the power of the sword. Instead, he made arguments. We need to make America argue with civility again, using data and reason—and love.

In one of Paul’s most famous passages, 1 Corinthians 13, he described love as a thing that is patient, kind, not self-seeking or boastful, not easily angered. He spoke of a love that keeps no record of wrongs. He called it the greatest of all virtues, and he had in mind the love that we might show each other as Christians (Gal. 6:10, John 13:35).

Nonetheless, love for others remains a central element of Christian teachings (Luke 10:25–37). Given the ever-rising atmosphere of hate, we would do well to recover this love as an operating principle within the church and to allow that love to spill out into the world. It might be our most important witness in this moment.

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  Name, Trump’s Would-Be Assassin and the Twisted Quest for Human Glory, by Russell Moore (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today):

In the hours of confusion and chaos since the assassination attempt at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, in which the former president was injured and several others killed or critically wounded, partisans of all sorts immediately began to speculate about the motives of the shooter. ...

Most Americans recognize the names of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, along with presidents closer to our own time. Many would struggle, though, to remember when James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce were inaugurated. Yet even those of us fuzzy on much of presidential history can probably identify immediately John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald—just as many who couldn’t name one of Ronald Reagan’s cabinet secretaries know the name of John Hinckley, his would-be assassin. Household names of 1968 like Edmund Muskie or Curtis LeMay have faded out of our memories, but we still know James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan.

Psychologists tell us that people who engage in terrorism of any sort are often well aware of how lasting this kind of notoriety can be. For many, it’s the point of their violence. When all is stable, that sort of perversion can be channeled into more benign vanities. But when—as now—the country seems to be teetering on the edge of something awful, those perversions can turn violent. Under certain conditions, they can tip a society into a cycle of rage and horror.

How are Christians to understand this?

A Christian vision of human depravity recognizes that God is not the author of evil and that evil itself is rooted in human longings and desires (James 1:12–18). The Serpent of Eden did not create a desire to see food as good; it merely appealed to that longing in a way that drew humanity away from God (Gen. 3:1–6). Likewise, the desire to worship, created good, can be perverted into idolatry. The desire for intimacy, created good, can be redirected toward lust.

From Scripture, the Christian tradition classifies evil as rooted in the world, the flesh, and the Devil (Eph. 2:2–3). We recognize that human nature is itself corrupted. We understand that we live in a world that, as the apostle John put it, “lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19, ESV throughout). And we recognize also that evil is oftentimes provoked by the context of the world around us. The woman caught in adultery was not threatened with being hit by one rock from one man; she was at the mercy of a mob, the function of which undoubtedly amplified and stirred the individual sins of each mob member (John 8:1–11). ...

Whatever their political views, most people want the same thing for someone who would murder this way: justice. Most Americans, though, also recognize that something is awry with our time: the conflation of politics with a sense of one’s belonging, of one’s identity, of one’s purpose and mission in life.

We are created to want glory, which includes recognition and ultimate purpose. But the glory for which we are created is the glory that comes through the power and wisdom of Christ. It cannot come from any of the substitutes on offer.

When we expect of politics what can only arise from worship, it’s all too easy to find ourselves speaking, whether explicitly or implicitly, in the language of spiritual warfare, making our political rivals not opponents to be persuaded but enemies to be vanquished. In that sort of cosplay apocalypse, one can feel “alive” and significant—for a moment—by hating the right people enough. And when we add to that the fact that a significant part of our population is struggling with mental health, we should not be surprised that the result includes bloodshed. ...

[T]he church has a mission here too. We need to proclaim a different sort of significance, a different sort of meaning, a different sort of belonging. We can remind ourselves that we need not clamor for our own glory, whether in heroic acts of goodness or in notorious acts of violence. We can find it by humbling ourselves before the future glory that is hidden now in Christ.

We can embody what it means to be a genuine community: one that sees the glory of God in the face of Jesus, not through the scope of a gun.

Fox News, Courage Under Fire and Grace After It. What Americans Learned From a Firefighter and a First Lady, by  Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

Melania Trump’s words, after the assassination attempt on her husband, showed Americans something extraordinary. So did Corey Comperatore's selfless actions.

In his spiritual autobiography "Confessions," St. Augustine of Hippo wrote that "evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains." In his later work "The Enchiridion," he observed that God, who is supremely good, can bring good even out of evil.

I recalled these timeless thoughts on the nature of evil and the reason for its persistence as I read the words of one person intimately close to the horrific tragedy in Butler, Pennsylvania last weekend, and reflected on the actions of another.

In her first statement after the assassination attempt on her husband’s life, former first lady Melania Trump said something profoundly beautiful: "political games are inferior to love." Those last three words – inferior to love – resonated, for so much was said with so little.

Even though likely still in shock, she was able to see unadulterated evil, terrifying and ugly as it may appear up close, for what it is. It is the presence of nothing, only the absence of goodness. This is an important insight at a precarious moment in the great American experiment. ...

As befits a firefighter, Corey Comperatore’s loving choice came not in words, for he had no time to reflect, only action. As soon as shots were fired, he used his own body to shield his family from a barrage of deadly gunfire. In the end, he traded his own life to save the ones he loved most dearly. ...

Love, a volitional act, is willing the good of the other; the more selfless the act, the more pure the love. In the end, Mr. Comperatore loved with a self-emptying heart, as purely as any mortal man can do.

In a tragedy’s aftermath, Mrs. Trump counseled a nation on how to avoid future evil. When evil is inevitable, a hero firefighter showed his countrymen how to make greater good out of it. 

St. Augustine is proud of both of them.

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Other op-eds by Esau McCaulley:

Other op-eds by Russell Moore:

Other op-eds by Mike Kerrigan:

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2024/07/christian-perspectives-attempted-assassination-president-trump-political-violence-glory-courage-grace.html

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