Trump Is Inaugurated President – Here Is What Will Change
Today is an interesting day in history. The United States of America has, by a minority of total votes cast and with the express assistance of the Soviet Union, elected the most random and disruptive president in its history. Those who voted for Trump – and most everyone in the Republican party – expect that this combination of randomness and disruptiveness will result in very good things for America. Maybe it will, though there is little in the history of the US or any other nation to suggest that randomness and disruptiveness are desirable qualities in executive leadership. And thus the US, a beacon of liberal democracy and the leader of the world, enters a new age where surprise and unintended consequences are guaranteed, where a reordering of national relations seems extremely likely, and where any outcome from “good” to “very, very bad” is possible. We are, indeed, at an interesting point in history.
So, with the onset of this new age, let’s be very clear what will change in regard to the really big, really important things that are driving events in the world: nothing. That’s right – nothing. Let’s put politics back into its relatively impotent place for a while and take a look at the mega-trends of this world.
- The Rejection of God’s Governance and the Adoption of Satan’s Model. When Satan decided he wanted to be above God and started a political campaign in heaven claiming that God was unfair and a poor leader, Satan rejected God’s governance model, which had love as its organizing principle. Satan claimed to have a better way. Astonishingly, a third of the angels in heaven accepted Satan’s claims and sided with him – or voted for him, if you will. Satan and his angels were thrown out of heaven and cast to earth. Here Satan succeeded in getting mankind (Adam and Eve) to believe his claims and to disobey God. By conquering man, Satan won the dominion of the earth that God had given to man and thus became the “god” of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). Here he had all he needed to set about proving that the “better way” he claimed to have in Heaven was just that. By looking at the way all natural things and all human things in the world operate, we can deduce that his “better way” was a system that had selfishness as its organizing principle, which is the opposite of God’s organizing principle. There are two fundamental problems with this. The first is that God is the given of life to the universe, and separation of God through rebellion causes death, whether it comes sooner or later. The second problem is that selfishness is the very definition of unsustainable, and everything that is selfishness-based will eventually collapse in on itself. Combine these two and you get the world as we see it today, and thus the world that Satan took over and twisted into a model of his rebellion stands as a witness of the falsehood of his claims against the character of God even as its selfishness-based systems result in greater conflict, greater suffering, greater inequality, and greater deceptions. The logical conclusion of such an order is accelerating decline and greater evil everywhere, but particularly in pursuit of power and wealth. Human society is in accelerating decline and there isn’t anything in the changing of a presidential administration in the United States that affects this narrative in any way. (This is a very brief overview of my “Selfishness Paradigm” approach. For a fuller and more fully Bible-referenced explanation, see the first in my series of six short videos on the subject here)
- The Marked and Accelerating Decline of the Natural World. When God created the world, it reflected his perfect character, which the Bible tells us is the very definition of Love. A character of perfect love does not – cannot – create something that is contrary to it. In other words, a character of perfect love cannot create a world full of disease and predation and conflict and hate and still be a character of perfect love. From this we know that Satan twisted the world – all the world. Since Satan’s charge was against God’s character and since God’s character was reflected in every aspect of life on earth – animal life and plant life and human life – we can understand that Satan felt compelled to establish a selfishness-based system for every form of life on earth. What kind of a rebellion would it be if he had not? He’d simply be agreeing that God’s design and God’s system were superior. But, of course, they were superior. And Satan’s selfishness-based system is unsustainable and doomed to collapse in on itself. Thus it is that we are seeing the collapse of life webs around the world and are seeing the very operating systems of the earth – our atmospheric, oceanic, fresh water, climate and food production systems – in rapid and accelerating decline. This accelerating decline threatens all human life on earth if it runs its natural course. There is nothing about a change of presidential administrations in the United States that stops or even slows this accelerating decline and the conflict, disease, hunger, and instability associated with it.
- The Role of Individuals in the War Between Christ and Satan. There is one thing left on earth that Satan does not control: those who reject his control. When Satan conquered Adam and Eve, it seems he expected them to remain conquered. But immediately after, God pronounced a curse on Satan that not only predicted Christ, but also freed man to reject the governance of Satan. Each individual is the focus of an epic struggle between Christ and Satan and each individual chooses the operating system they want in their lives – a selfishness-based approach or a love-based approach. Those who choose Christ and the love-based approach to running the universe are a demonstration to the rest of the world that there is an alternate way to the system that Satan has established in the world. These people – these Christians – are a witness through their lives and a living protest to Satan and what he has done to the world. There is nothing about a new presidential administration in Washington DC that changes personal responsibility (and liability) in this war between Christ and Satan.
Taken all together, perhaps the only thing that really changed today is that the role of Christians got incrementally more important as the opportunity to draw distinctions between the way the world is and the way it was created grows yet clearer. But then, that happens every day. At the same time, Satan works even harder with each passing day to push or pull, woo or threaten, people into accepting his selfishness-based operating system for the world. It is critical that Christians, immersed as they are in a hostile world, proclaim even more loudly that there is a different and better way.
What started off as a political fight will end as a political fight because the war between Christ and Satan is a political one, which is to say that it is fought with ideas and organizing principles and leadership character and will not be decided by weapons. As we look upon the world as it stands today, with the pursuit of power, wealth, and status the dominant and driving force, and as we contemplate the increasing anger among nations and the increasing state of conflict, let us contemplate whether in our personal lives we are upholding a system of living based on accepting God and his kingdom of love, or based on Satan and his chaotic and decaying kingdom based on selfishness. The chaos approach to governance does not work, nor does the selfishness-based model. It’s just that simple. And nothing that happened today in Washington DC changes that.
–Scott Christiansen
While true that this change may not be the major catalyst to the state of our planets ecological problems, it certainly does not fair positive to some turn around of direction. I do see this moment we are in as meaning more than just another transition and do see the possiblity approaching probability of prophetic importance. As Israel reached its time to turn from its path yet still believing God was with them, I see similar parallels for America. We shall see. I believe in our traditional prophetic understandings fundamentally and as we witness the breakdowns you have shared with us along with the societal, political, religious disruptions then add cataclysmic events that are also escalating, without becoming alarming it does seem we have reached a pivotal moment in salvation history. Anyway I enjoy your particular emphasis on planetary systems and their state. It’s another piece of the puzzle.
tHi Don! It is true that I am treading very carefully and very lightly in this article. I am loathe to get involved too deeply in politics, as it always distracts from the truly important topics at hand. That said, I am watching trends in American politics very, very carefully. If we begin to see any significant non-democratic tendencies (call it imperial presidency, strong-man, facist, or whatever you want) I will be very quick to discuss it here. The reason for this is because I feel we as a society may be on the cusp of a willingness to discard traditional minority freedoms, including freedom of religion. If we get to the place where liberties can be stripped through executive order, then we truly have entered a new era where rapid prophetic fulfillment is possible. As Jesus told us in Matthew 24 & 25, we are to “watch”! I am glad we are keeping watch together.
I thought I would highlight a couple of lines from Trump’s inaugural speech, which seem to set the stage/plant the seed of a form of patriotism that could be, well, a little unnerving but not unexpected:
“At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.”
“There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.
We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.”
“We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.
A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.”
So, there’s a strong theme of unity, and rightly so. And a theme of God’s protection, which is also true. But…
What if things do happen and God’s “protection” seems to have vanished? What happens to unity then? This patriotism is a call to put America first, which I will do and strongly believe it – but no nation-state comes before service and obedience to God!
The American people can do more together for good than any other people group on the planet. His job, first, I believe, is to spearhead that principle to truly make American great again. But at what price? I wonder, if we asked Mr. Trump, “What comes first, God or America?” What would he say? I know what I do say, will say and will never stop saying to my dying breath: God, Family, Country. In that order forever.
Mike,
So good to hear from you. As you can tell, I am taking a measured approach to my political comments. I don’t want to distract from otherwise important comments. That said, I harbor grave concerns about the juxtaposition of a destabilizing world with what seems to be an unstable president. If we take the inauguration speech you cited in your comments, and combine that with the speech Trump gave at the CIA today, the net effect is one that engenders grave concern for fact-based governance. The problem here is that when world events (disasters, earth systems in accelerating decline, etc.) make such an impact that no one can ignore them, then it seems likely the Trump administration will lurch into a response that will be guided by the most powerful and credible player in the global environmental sector, which to me seems to be the Pope. I see many opportunities here for the fulfillment of prophecy but won’t be writing about them until we have a little more clarity. Maybe I am completely wrong in my sense of what might be coming. We’ll know soon enough.
Blessings on you!
Scott