Jesus beat him by three days. The protomartyr’s narcissism will gnaw the dry bones of his soul.
Evangelicals in the US are already claiming God saved Trump from death, by a millimetre. One has to ask, why would God do such a thing, when God has not saved 38000 people in Gaza, or the 1000 after Hamas went through the wall, or or or…the list can go on. Either God cares only for a few sanctified people -heralded as such by people- like Trump, or that is not how God operates in the world, or God does not exist. But then, evangelicals and other such persons who are absolute in their beliefs never let a few facts or logic or science interfere with what they claim.
Are we, though, witnessing a new religion rising on earth? Could our descendants in 2,000 years be worshipping the name of Trump (God, how he would love that!)? Would they be taking pilgrimages to sacred real estate? not Jerusalem or Mecca but Trump tower in New York? Would his mother become a new Mary, his children the founders of a new semi-divine dynasty? (God, how insufferable some of them would be.).
If Trump is anointed by the majority as king-president, will everyone have to bow or genuflect when he strolls into a room? Despite Trump’s post near-death experience claim that he will govern for all Americans, if so anointed, his rule will not admit of dissent. A prayer for (to?) Trump be considered more appropriate and meaningful than any prayer to the Deity (him?-her?-It?) self?
An alien visiting from outer space, or from heaven, watching the exuberant adulation poured upon a man, and not even a good man; not a messiah, the job for which a Trump resume does not exist, the alien would go back from whence he or she came, befuddled.
Trump’s own blood will seem to wash him clean, not by that of Jesus, because Trump couldn’t bow to anyone, or convert, or have a kind of Buddha enlightenment experience that could prod him to think of and act for the good of others than himself and his family. His speech after the near-death experience was, again, about him, despite the blather about ‘governing for all Americans’.
Pundits have described Trump’s supporters as ‘followers’. These followers of his remind me of the 1979 movie Life of Brian which was written, not to poke fun at any messiah, deity or prophet but at the human penchant to turn their messiahs, deities and prophets into images of themselves, based upon their own human fears and desires.
Life of Brian is, of course, funny and absurd because the creators of the movie are making fun of how absurd humans can be when they follow those they turn into protomartyrs and kings and false messiahs. There is a scene when Brian is trying to get away from people and hands over a gourd. Someone proclaims it as the saviour’s, making it holy. Since it is a holy object everyone, so the new followers claim, should hold it high in his honour.
As Brian runs away, he loses a shoe (sandal). The chasing people stop at the sandal. Someone picks it up and proclaims that everyone who follows the protomessiah Brian should walk without one sandal and hold the other up. Thus, the first two sects form and the first arguments who is right and who is wrong begin.
But when one sees it played out in the real world, such behavior is absurd but also dangerous. The images of Maga followers/RNC delegates emulating Trump with a bandage on their right ear are funny, at least to those of us who are outside the sacred aura, and absurd, but it is also disturbing. It is so because this sort of behaviour engenders fanaticism.
For secular Republican folk who don’t care what the herd does as long as it continue to buy stuff, obey the new alligators and help the elite increase their wealth and power, the degradation of Christianity to a secular protomartyr/messiah is a useful joke. But for people who profess ‘Jesus as Lord’, and yet adopt the new politico-religious symbol (alongside or above the one whom they call Lord), it is apostasy.
The Church’s standard definition of apostasy defined those who at first believed (assented to) the required list of credal statements, over which the gourds and the sandals fought for centuries. The most famous ‘apostate’ was Julian, the emperor (331-363 ce). This definition of apostate replaced, and nearly snuffed out, what ‘faith’ was in its primal state (e.g. St Paul): trust in Jesus the Jew (the Gentile’s messiah) as Lord. Loyalty to that Person, to no other, demands one loves and has mercy to others, putting asiade or using one’s wealth and power for tohtrs who are not so lucky as you. If a Christiqtn finds himself unable to mainatin loyalty to this Person beyond lou=yalty to another person or a state, then he or she should ceae apsotacy and return to the secular realm. How different a Lord is this than any other human, whether political leader, self-appointed messiah or other-appointed lord.
A word about the worship of mere men (emperors, kings, presidents, or in fact any human): they will kick you to the curb once your usefulness is over, as were the Romans Cicero (106-43 bce) and Seneca (4-65 ce).