I can’t count how many times I have read or heard some version of the following rationalization since Trump took office:

“We need to understand that God uses ungodly people for His purposes. The Bible has story after story about the unlikeliness of who He chose to lead a people, a nation. I support President Trump for his policies .. not his personality.”

I have yet to hear an example so that we can look at a story together and consider the person, the context, and the lessons God intended.

There are centuries of reigns by kings documented in the Bible, their lives distilled to one of these two statements:

1.) He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left, or …

2.) He did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord his God.

As for the status of those kingdoms of God? — Each went the way of their king. The pendulum swung back and forth over the centuries. The whole kingdom swung to good. The whole kingdom swung to bad.

In the book of Samuel, we learn that God never wanted kings. His will was that his chosen priests continue to lead. During the time of the priest Samuel, the people of God’s kingdom rejected God’s will and demanded a king. All the other kingdoms had kings, they wanted one, too. God ultimately relented and they chose Saul. David, meanwhile, was handpicked by God (via Samuel) to later take Saul’s place as their first God-approved king.

Not because it was God’s will. Because it was the people’s will.

Still, David was a man after God’s own heart. He was not sinless, but repentant and intensely recommitted to God after, for an overall lifetime yielded to service of God. Most kings after David, however, were not “pleasing to God”. They did what was evil in His eyes. Read Kings 1 and 2, and 1st and 2nd Samuel, and the Chronicles, and the lesson over and over is that God allowed free will and the rise to power of evil kings as well as good.

Just because a president is elected, does not equate to “he is who God chose”.

Just because a president claims to be a Christian, does not equate to being pleasing in the eyes of God.

Just because a party claims that God endorses that party, does not make it so.

Just because a president tackles single issues, such as abortion, that line up with a specific religion’s stances, does not equate to “God chose Trump (or anyone else)”.

To someone who claims, “Trump is accomplishing God’s will”, I ask:

Is he? How did you land on that conclusion? – because people told you so?

Or because God told you so?

What about the other stances important to God, like caring for the most vulnerable people in society? More is written in the Bible about that, yet those directives are alright to ignore? Policies against those people are alright?

When political stances and figures are weighted with “God endorses him”, we’d better be hearing it from God himself, not people. To do otherwise is to prioritize people over God.

To oblige a person or group instead of God … does not end well.

Take a look again at God’s kingdoms of old.

Proverbs 8:13 To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.