Go Your Own Way

The following is a comment I wrote on Facebook on this date in 2019, when someone I know insisted Trump was doing all the right things in office. No matter what transpired, this person defaulted to Trump’s narrative to approve it. He consistently propagated the mantra instead of acknowledging reality.

November 2019 was also during the time an inquiry was launched over Trump’s quid pro quo in Ukraine.

As you read this five-year-old comment, go back in time to what was happening then. Then consider if anything in Trump, or in his followers, have changed.

Then, if you call yourself a Christian, ask yourself …

At the forks in the road of your personal decisions regarding Trump, did you choose God? …

Or did you choose Trump?

November 21, 2019.

Trump’s mantra has been that he would, and is now “draining the swamp”. To his loyalists, this covers every move he makes, every person he ejects, and every replacement he makes. He’s “just following through on his election promise to drain the swamp”.

This term, by the way, is used only by people who adopt his views. They believe him. He says he’s ridding government of corruption. They believe him because he said it. In the face of hard evidence of Trump’s longstanding past corruption, they adamantly deny he is anything but honest and upstanding. In the face of evidence of his corrupt practices happening now, in office, they say, “He’s draining the swamp”. End of discussion. They are right and everyone observing reality and sounding the alarms are wrong.

Why would they believe that Trump himself does not practice corruption? He circumvents the law. Isn’t that the definition of corruption?

His past as a businessman was riddled with legal troubles. He extorted students who enrolled in his university, which he falsely presented as accredited. He has outstanding cases from previous business dealings in which he failed to pay for services provided. He refuses to release his tax records.

Currently, he refuses to cooperate with subpoenas, and advises his underlings to do the same. The case in Ukraine is one example of how he operates apart from transparent, ethical and legal avenues. His exposure as corrupt has been confirmed under oath seven to eight times this week by people who were there.

What he has done is both unethical and illegal. His supporters morph factual exposure of his corruption into a conspiracy theory or proof of a deep state. “They’re determined to wrongfully accuse and evict him. It’s a witch hunt.” And they believe him. So they never hold him to account.

That they choose to believe him over evidence is the right of every pro-Trumper, but to do so is beyond alarming. It is the mindset of “the Holocaust never happened”; the thinking of “the Earth is flat”.

To deny facts in preference for being “right”, or unyielding in an existing view, is dangerous to others, and dangerous to the one who chooses it. It is the stuff of deluded minds. By the time one is deluded, he doesn’t realize that he is.

“Trump is God’s chosen for such a time as this”, they repeat. No amount of challenging their chosen Biblical arguments with contradicting Biblical arguments changes their stance.

As for tying Trump to God, consider who God is, and His words. God views those who lead others astray as having “blood on their hands”.

Yet supporters of Trump view him as merely “imperfect”, “like we all are”. “He’s just saying what we all are thinking.” (No, no we aren’t all thinking that way. Decent people never think that way. But now we know YOU think that way.)

We are being led to immediately reject truths and whitewash Trump’s behavior and actions, regardless the degree of ethics, morality, or law. We are being led to discredit anyone and everyone who sheds light on the truth. We are even being led to believe in conspiracy theories and the Deep State. People I know actually believe that utter nonsense, and propagate it. People I knew to be intelligent have given away their minds to lies.

Many of these same people preach that God is Truth and Satan is the father of lies. Then they choose the lies. If that doesn’t reveal that they have turned their backs to God, I don’t know what does.

Yet they insist they are in truth and God has endorsed them and their father-of-lies politics, and fellow believers who don’t agree are the “accusers of the brethren”. I’ve been called that a few times for challenging a lie promoted by someone from the radicalized-politicized-religious right. These people are not fiction, they surround us, and are calling themselves and Trump “God’s chosen”.

If anyone without Trump’s power and resources did any one of the things that he has done or said, they would be swiftly fired from their jobs at the very least; removed from even low level offices; brought to impeachment hearings as Clinton was for sexual immorality; fined for libel or slander; or imprisoned for fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, and bribery.

Yet Trump’s converts stand by their man.

So, Christians who use the Bible and God himself to defend Trump …

Is it not in the Bible to be wise who we associate with, and who we conform to? When it’s not God we’ve conformed to, it is obvious in our language right away. For example, those who conform to a specific political party instead of Him use the verbiage of their influencer: verbiage such as “the swamp”, “deep state”, “never-Trumpers”, “witch hunt”, etc.

Most critically, whom we adhere to sets the course of our lives. It is the fork in the road — go with the road of God or not, that is each person’s prerogative — but to know God and then choose an alternative route, is to knowingly refuse Him.

That should set off massive alarm bells …

Unless it’s too late, and a person is so far down the road of choice that he is out of earshot of God’s guidance, discipline, and warnings. Those who knowingly, willingly reject Him in favor of an alternate option, shouldn’t be surprised when He ultimately allows them to go their own way.

Will He protect the person who does that? They can demand it, and believe it will happen for them, but is He required to exempt them from His justice when they have rejected Him? Must He oblige them with mercy, forgiveness, and exoneration without their contrition, change of course, and humility? Must He do that for them merely because they demand it of Him?

You have to throw out the Bible and the identity of God to land on that certainty. Maybe you already have.

On Staying Out Of Traps

Let’s talk golf. Specifically, let’s talk hazards.

By definition, a hazard is an area of a golf course which provides a difficult obstacle, and is usually of two types: water hazards such as lakes and rivers; and man-made hazards such as bunkers. Bunkers are designed to be impediments to golfers’ progress toward the green.

There are man-made hazards in life, too. They are abundant in quantity, seeped in varying degrees of injustice or cruelty, and often come from unexpected sources. Who are these people who choose to be bunkers, who aspire to catch us in their traps?

  • They are the trolls at gatherings or on social media, baiting whoever will bite with untrue or bombastic statements. They like to inflame, to goad us into reacting, to pull us into their broiler. The antitheses of peacekeepers, they are Fight Seekers.

golf course with fire hazard  

  • They are the self-serving plotters, strategists who design ways to take from us, to harm us, to come out ahead at our expense. When they succeed at both plotting and implementation of deviousness, we land right where they want us: in the rough; in the sand; in the deep water of injustice.

golf ball underwater

  • They are the malingerers, with goals of living out their days in perpetual trouble. While others endeavor to get out of hazards and put trouble behind, they stubbornly adhere to the bunker they built. They don’t care if we drown in their masterminded troubles, they just want us in there with them.

golf underwater, for blog

  • Unlike those in true need, they are the Hazard Makers. They pose as unaware victims, as having no idea where the trap originated. If they don’t advertise their rotten luck or the contrived injustice done them, they can’t get our sympathy, our anger and action against their so-called “enemies”, or our service to their fabricated needs. These people don’t want solutions, they want problems. Problems put them front and center as the object of our attention.
  • They are the impeccable actors and actresses in everyday life, good at their craft, and unmindful of truth or who they malign. Their bunkers are deceptively attractive; our entrapment essential to their hidden motives. We’re caught the moment we believe their falsehoods.

As the saying goes, “We have but one life to live.” We can choose to avoid the bunkers, battle our way out when we do land there, and play out our lives on the fairways and greens. We can do our best to never be a hazard to others. We can offer to help people out of the rough, point them to the smooth fairways, support their progress toward the greens, and applaud their well-earned victories.

Choose for yourself who you will be — a hazard or not — and how you will play your game. As for me and my house …