Transformation of Trump…and All of Us

Thank you very much, everybody.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
Complicated business.
Complicated.              – President-Elect Donald Trump

With those words, the man who will likely become the 45^th president of the United States publically greeted his staff and supporters in the early morning hours following Election Day, 2016.  Donald Trump’s acceptance speech signaled the end of one phase of his “complicated business” of leading what he calls a “great movement” to “Make America Great Again.”  Meanwhile, his opponent, Sec. Hillary Clinton, her many supporters and many others across the nation were in stunned amazement at the reports of what Trump had just accomplished with no prior experience in public office.

President-Elect Donald J. Trump and VP-Elect, Mike Pence

A very cheery Donald Trump addressed positive words of assurance to our wounded and divided nation following the bitter campaign.  As if he was speaking into the heart of every American, he promised to serve well as their president, saying,

I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all of Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.

With a much smaller budget for his campaign and with a much less elaborate “ground game,” Donald Trump accomplished what few believed he could do.  Trump’s key to success was that he understood the outcry of many Americans who want less government and a humble, servant spirit from those in Washington.  Trump addressed this fact with the following words:

As I've said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family.

Having witnessed the lack of hope and the frustration on so many faces of Americans across the country, and now this night suddenly realizing that his shoulders will soon bear the weight of presidential responsibilities, Trump renewed his commitment to the American people (emphasis mine),

It is a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds, and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people -- and serve the people it will. … I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all of Americans, and this is so important to me.

This afternoon when I heard these recorded words from President-Elect Trump, I was much encouraged by his vision for the federal government—“a government to serve the people.”  My immediate response was to ask myself whether this often brash, unpredictable man can be a “servant leader” or “steward-leader”—one who can exercise stewardship of the power and privilege entrusted to him by the citizens he serves, and ultimately entrusted by God to Whom all power belongs.  Only time will tell.  But for now, we should thank God for allowing the uncontested selection of our next president, and for allowing the respectful acknowledgement of Trump’s victory by his opponent.  Both of these processes will aid in the reuniting of our country.

If Donald Trump is to be an effective steward leader he will need the prayers of Christ-followers across our land and the world who acknowledge that all power comes from God.  Christians should remember that true steward leadership grows from humility.  A humble leader serves the people well and does not abuse his power.  He or she remembers his own puniness and depravity in the presence of Almighty God.  Or in the words of Vice President-Elect Mike Pence whom I respect as a proven servant leader we must regularly “bend the knee and bow the head” in prayer to God.  We can continue pray that God will spiritually transform Donald Trump through his association with godly men of proven character like Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee, Franklin Graham, and Ben Carson.

In a 2012 article, Character Qualities of a Steward-Leader, I referred to President Ronald Reagan as an example of one whose leadership was successful because he acknowledged the sovereignty of God in the affairs of nations.  Reagan also demonstrated godly character in his dealings with others and through his respect for the spiritual heritage of America.  Speaking at a prayer breakfast shortly after his election as governor of California, in 1967, Reagan said,

Faith in God is absolutely essential if a person is to do his best.  Sometimes we’re afraid to let people know that we rely on God.  Belief in the dependence on God is essential to our state and nation.  This will be an integral part of our state as long as I have anything to do with it.

King Solomon also recognized the supreme authority of God over his rule and acknowledged his desperate need of God’s wisdom and strength.  At the beginning of his administration, Solomon prayed,

Now, O LORD my God, You have made Your servant king in place of my father David, yet I am but a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in…So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?  It was pleasing in the sight of the Lord. – King Solomon (1 Kings 3: 7, 9, 10)

Could it be that God has bestowed the Presidency of the United States upon Donald Trump so that, in the words of pagan King Nebuchadnezzar,

…the living may know
that the Most High [God] is Ruler
over the realm of mankind,
and bestows it on whom He wishes,
and sets over it the lowliest of men. – Daniel 4: 17

Neither Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, or King Solomon were born with exemplary moral character.  However, throughout history God has graciously worked in the lives of men and women to prepare them to be godly leaders.  The Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 2: 10 writes,  We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

If you are a Christ-follower, please pray that God will transform the life of Donald Trump as he senses the full weight of responsibility that is about to be on his shoulders.  Pray that Trump will humbly respond to God’s call in his life through circumstances, through godly mentors, and through the prayers and encouragement of God’s people that we will recognize and exercise our responsibility to pray for our next president, his family, and those he will choose to serve with him.

Fundamentals of Conservation, Part 1 "Serving with" Our Creator -- Article #3 Knowing His Heart

Our recent Oikonomia entries on “Fundamentals of Conservation” have emphasized that biblical environmental stewardship, or “biblical conservation” is truly “con-service” or serving with creation. But to serve with creation requires a knowledge of and obedience to what matters to God based upon knowledge of His Holy Scriptures.  In our May Oikonomia, we emphasized that those who would practice biblical conservation must share a child’s eagerness to learn about the world and to submit eagerly to God’s plans for creation as revealed in Scripture.  But, how can we develop and apply child-like faith in God’s Truth in a world that seems increasingly antagonistic, particularly toward Judeo-Christian truth claims?   The answer lies in Christ’s instruction to His disciples and to us.

Before His death and resurrection, Christ prayed for His disciples and all of us who would follow Him later:  They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth (John 17: 16-17).  Although we are in the world, we can pursue God’s truth through prayer and meditation in His Word.  Without it, our thinking and our actions toward creation are distorted and limited in ultimate value.   Unfortunately, increasing numbers of people deny that the Bible has anything to say about the origin, purpose, and destiny of creation.  Therefore, it is important that we emphasize in this entry that conservers of creation must ultimately be “obedient conservers of Truth.”

Jesus Christ, the Creator, has already come into His creation full of grace and truth (John 1: 14b) to bring us Eternal Life through faith both here on Earth and in our Life to come on the New Earth.  Therefore, would-be steward conservationists should recognize that every act that is intended to do good toward the Earth should be done with the reality that unless the contributor has individually reconciled with God and accepted His atonement for sin, he or she is on a path to eternal Hell.  Such a path is quite divergent from the path of the Earth which has a much brighter future.  Therefore, it stands to reason that God-pleasing stewards of creation must know something of God’s heart for the creation and be able to express His will in words and in acts of conservation.

Smokey Bear poster (1944):  We are beginning to
recover from this false view of land stewardship.

Today as a case in point, many are wondering about the “State of the Earth” and what actions we should take as stewards to conserve the life support system of Earth.  But the more we study the biosphere the more complex we realize it is.  Conservation efforts once thought to be wise—e.g. saving forests by preventing forest fires, saving wildlife populations by restricting hunting in the absence of natural predators, or saving wildlife populations by importing alien species to control them—all have produced some unintended consequences.   One would think such consequences would be cause for humility in our science.

I am concerned that the increasingly politically driven efforts to thwart the alleged human-caused climate change may end up as yet another set of unintended consequences.  Most scientists would agree that “there is no such thing as ‘settled science’.”  Yet today, in spite of scientific evidence on both sides of the question of human-caused climate change, each side of the argument seeks to silence or ignore the other.  Many scientists find it difficult to resist the strong and tempting offers of large research grants which lead to more publications and professional advancement.  A scriptural approach to this temptation is to insist on open dialog among those whose data contradict, perhaps because they have taken different research or because they use different assumptions in their climate models.  A true scientific understanding of creation requires open, honest dialog, rigorous hypothesis testing, skepticism, peer review, and avoidance of overstating conclusions.  We have called this “good science.”

The scientist Johannes Kepler described science as "thinking God's thoughts after Him."  It ought to follow that obedient conservers of creation use “good science” as a means to accurately “speak” on behalf of their Creator about His creation.  We might liken this relationship based on truth to a good speechwriter who seeks to capture a sense of the values and passion of the one he or she serves.  For example, Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, the “great communicator” in the early 1980’s.  In her 2001 NY Times bestseller, When Character Was King, Noonan attributes Reagan’s commitment to truth and truth-telling as the basis for his effectiveness as the world leader credited with the eventual fall of Soviet communism.   She writes:

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

Ronald Reagan loved the truth.   We all do or say we do, but for Reagan it was like fresh water, something he needed and wanted.  He loved the truth for a number of reasons, a primary one of which is that he thought it…uniquely constructive.  He thought that by voicing it you were beginning to make things better.  He thought the truth is the only foundation on which can be built something strong and good and lasting—because only truth endures.  Lies die.  – (When Character Was King, p. 200)

Peggy Noonan illustrates how the power of spoken truth through President Reagan brought change to people, governments, and the world.   Unlike many American leaders during the era of Soviet domination of much of Asia and Eastern Europe, Reagan spoke the truth about Soviet totalitarianism without apology.  His message reached the Soviet prisons where Russian dissidents began to hear it whispered by their guards, or through radio broadcasts.  Noonan shares the testimony of one Russian dissident, Anatoly Shchransky:

Sometimes he and other men would empty out the toilets and the sinks and whisper to each other through the pipes.  Sometimes they used code, from cell to cell.  And there were other ways he didn’t want to talk about.  But he wanted me to know that there were times when Ronald Reagan spoke that the gulag would explode with a great racket of taps, knocks and whispers as they heard what he said and passed it on.

Some of Reagan’s words of truth that were whispered and tapped through Soviet prisons were probably ones he spoke to the British Parliament, on June 8 1982:   Here is the enduring greatness of the British contribution to mankind, the great civilized ideas:  individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under God.

Eventually, the iron curtain was torn open, the wall came down, and cell doors holding political dissidents swung open to provide freedom from the oppression of Soviet communism because of the words and the actions of Ronald Reagan and others who spoke the truth.  Although today the scourge of totalitarian governments under communism and Islamic extremists threaten and destroy individual freedom and plunge civil societies back into darkness, there still exists within the hearts of many who have not been broken and discouraged the desire to be free and to participate in a society of the self-governed. 

And mankind can no more create and maintain responsible government by the people than he can function effectively in the larger sphere of trying to practice conservation of the planet.  At least, not unless he understands the truth that our rights and privileges come from above, from Almighty God, Who has made us stewards, serving at His behest. 

And how can we serve God, and keep (serve with) creation without walking in close obedience to God through His Word?  Just as a speechwriter must know the mainspring of truth that drives her boss in order to help him communicate his or her convictions, so we must know the heart of God through His Scriptures if we are to do anything worthwhile and lasting toward our neighbor and the Earth.  Out of this intimacy of relationship through the Word of Truth, we can both serve God and serve with creation—and do so with the right motives, passion, and purpose whispered and tapped into our souls by our Heavenly Father.

“Fair-Minded Words” for Human Life?

Kudos to President Obama for delivering a forceful commencement address at the University of Notre Dame on May 17 with our whole nation, still embroiled in heated controversy over the moral rights of the unborn, seemingly in the audience. It is also commendable that the White House included in the official speech transcript the words of a heckler, “Abortion is murder! Stop killing children!” and the President’s response, “We're fine, everybody...We're not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable sometimes.”

In keeping with this challenge, the president called the nation to "work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term."

Our president went on to challenge Notre Dame graduates and our nation reach to a higher level of dialog about controversial issues, using “fair-minded words” and to “open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do [in order to] “discover at least the possibility of common ground.”

Then, the President elaborated (italics mine): In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you've been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse. But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

On this note, we can certainly hope for a new era of “fair-minded words”– one in which we would listen carefully to the words of another president who spoke at a Notre Dame commencement on another May 17. In 1981, it was President Reagan at the podium. Referring to our founding fathers, he said:

“They gave us more than a nation. They brought to all mankind for the first time the concept that man was born free, that each of us has inalienable rights, ours by the grace of God....”

Then, six years later, President Reagan proclaimed January 18, 1987 as National Sanctity of Human Life Day with these words:

“Our Founding Fathers pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence. They announced their unbreakable bonds with its immutable truths that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Americans of every succeeding generation have cherished our heritage of God-given human rights and have been willing to sacrifice for those rights, just as our Founders did. Those rights are given by God to all alike. Medical evidence leaves no room for doubt that the distinct being developing in a mother's womb is both alive and human. This merely confirms what common sense has always told us. Abortion kills unborn babies and denies them forever their rights to ``Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Our Declaration of Independence holds that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, and our Constitution -- founded on these principles -- should not be read to sanction the taking of innocent human life.”

Now, President Obama has proclaimed that “those of us who believe must trust that His (God’s) wisdom is greater than our own.” But where do we find God’s wisdom? God reveals His wisdom both in nature and in His written Word, the Bible. In His natural revelation, we can see, courtesy of YouTube, the awesome development of the human being in the mother’s womb. Thanks to the work of many women’s centers across our nation, many women contemplating abortion respond to this “natural revelation” by carrying their baby to full term.

In His written revelation, the Bible, God makes it clear that it is not “beyond our capacity to know with certainty...what God asks of us.” For example, God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah, saying “ "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5);" Or, the God, of whom King David said, “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them (Psalm 139:16).

So, we conclude with thanks to President Obama for his challenge to “trust that His (God’s) wisdom is greater than our own.” We can be certain that the Creator God values the life of the unborn. We can also be certain of the statistics from the U.S. Census Report of 2006 (See Table 77). The report reveals that Black Americans are no longer replacing themselves because there are more deaths than live births. According to Protecting Black Life, “35% of the abortions in the United States are performed on African American women, while they represent only 13% of the female population of the country. African Americans are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population.” Let us pray that President Obama will not “shy away from things that are uncomfortable.” May his speech at Notre Dame be remembered as a turning point– a time at which he turns toward becoming a protector of the moral and civil rights of both the African American minority and of the unborn of all humanity.