The Chicago Cubs, Mr. Trump, and The Shining

The Chicago Cubs won their first World Series Championship last week. This week, Mr. Donald Trump won the Presidential Election. The Cubs won, and I say this as a Saint Louis Cardinals fan, because they were the best team in Major League Baseball. Congratulations to the Cubs.

However, Mr. Trump won because his brand of Republicanism contained the angriest political group in the United States. I predicted the Cubs would win when they were down 3-1 to the Cleveland Indians. I predicted Mr. Trump would win when a member of my own church told me why he was voting for Trump. He was honest, but that’s when it hit me: many, or maybe most, white evangelicals are voting for Trump! And they did! I called the election for Trump two days prior to the vote. Just like the Cubs, I was prophetic, I saw the vision, I had “The Shining.” The Shining: that premonition that sees what the normal human can’t. Yep.

The Trump national campaign and many local republican platforms ran on anti-Obama, anti-Hillary, and anti-Anybody Other than America. It was American First, Second, Third, Fourth, etc, etc, etc.

There was also the “We will kick your ass if you mess with us” agenda. Many in Trump’s camp want to fight. Actually the politicians don’t want to fight, they want to send lower and lower middle class people to fight. Even in Missouri, we now have a Governor-Elect whose major asset was that he was a Navy Seal—okay, so what does that mean as a governor? That he will actually be a covert operator in Jefferson City? Yep, that’s what we need—more covert politicians.

Many of my white evangelical friends say that people are just mad about how the government is run. Wow. I wonder how mad the Native Americans are about how our government has run over the last few hundred years.

What should the Church in the United States do? First and foremost, believe the Gospel—Jesus is Still LORD. Jesus Knows, Cares, and is Able to calm every storm, even this one. Pray for Mr. Trump and his Family, and his Cabinet selections. Pray for his decision making with our military and his relationships with world leaders. Pray that he will have a burden for those who are truly voiceless—the poor, the mass incarcerated, those rescued in sex trafficking, those abused by law enforcement, those who are very afraid of an openly angry white republican President who believes the whole US Church is on his side—very scary to believe that, especially for the churches that are not on his side.

Pray that we don’t have an active aggressive civil war on our hands in the country. Protests or civil disobediences that raise the visibility or volume over what’s being abuse, ignored or forgotten in our country may be warranted, but the church should be present in these events to keep the event at a manageable “temperature.”

Pray that we don’t have a passive aggressive, clandestine civil war on our hands in the US Church. Pray that gains in Racial Reconciliation are not lost. If the numbers are right, there is a definite split between Black and White Evangelicals on supporting Mr. Trump and most local Republicans. Pray that we, as a Body of Believers, won’t look across the racial divide and be happy with that division—an attitude of “you stay on your side, and I will stay on my side. We won’t bother you, you don’t bother us.”

In closing, if you are not a minority, you can’t possibly know what it feels like to be black, brown, or yellow in America. It is hard. But Jesus is LORD. I wish I could depend on something else to keep me from going nuts in my beloved country, but bottomline: He Is all I need. My one true hope. And oh yeah, I also have “The Shining.”