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What can I say about Donald Trump?

For the 2555^th day since he became a presidential candidate in 2016 he’s head-line news again, this time for being indicted for trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. 

And that got me to thinking about hell. Now stay with me on this as I explain what I mean. 

First of all, for everything Trump did and continues to do to us as the American people, he belongs in hell.

Unlike any president before or since, he brought shame to the office he held, continues to create chaos and division, and with every public statement he makes reveals just how hateful a man he is. The dictionary definitions of corruptness and moral depravity should have Trump’s picture beside them.

In short, he is the ideal person for God to condemn to hell.

Except, God won’t because there is no hell. If God were in the business of damning people, Trump would surely be one of them. But that is not what God does, at least not the God I believe in.

Honestly, when it comes to Trump, I wish I believed in a vengeful God, but I don’t. It makes no sense to me to believe God would create human beings with the freedom to be good or bad and then threaten us with hell if we don’t choose to be good.

That hardly speaks well of God, nor does it say much for being good. If I am good because I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I’m not, how good is that really?

Yet, this is the message the church has taught about the divine/human relationship, not for God’s sake, I suggest, but for its own. Never mind that the whole idea contradicts God’s love being unconditional. Early on the church chose to say God’s love is unconditional and then proceeded to put conditions on it, adding of course, that God still loves people even though God is quite willing to make the bad ones pay for being bad.

This tactic worked for a while, in fact, a long time, but then people finally figured out what the church was actually doing, protecting its own authority rather than advancing the message of a loving God.

So hell became a big deal until it wasn’t. Most people never think about it now. That’s one reason why they don’t go to church anymore. They’re not afraid of hell, freeing them to focus on all the other reasons for dropping out, including questioning the image of God the church’s heaven and hell message reflects.

Some mainline churches have finally chosen to focus on God’s love and grace and ignore hell altogether, a message I think is more consistent with the over all message Jesus embodied and taught.

The impact of this refocusing of the Christian message has helped people to understand that being good is a reward in itself, that being honest, decent, caring, loving, compassionate, forgiving, self-sacrificing is in fact what gives life meaning and purpose and holds the key to building healthy relationships.

Which brings me back to Donald Trump. He knows nothing about any of this. All he knows is that his life is all that matters, No one else’s, and no one else, period.

That’s why he was the awful president he was. A man wrapped up in himself, William Sloan Coffin once said, makes for a very small package. The job was too big for him.

Being the small man he is while believing he is bigger (and better) than everyone else is why he deserves to go to hell, if only there was one.

But that may not be the last word. There may be hell for Trump to pay after all, only this one is of his own making. I say that because the Apostle Paul did in fact say, “God will not be mocked, we will reap what we sow” (Galatians 6:7).

Therein is the hope, that Donald Trump will reap what he has sown, gets what’s coming to him, and suffer as if he were in hell.

Reports about how angry he is in private about the public humiliation he feels because of the indictments he is facing suggest he is in fact experiencing the consequences of his own actions.

It turns out, then, that God doesn’t have to punish really bad people. Circumstances most often conspire so they end up doing that to themselves.

Trump’s hell may not be as punishing as the one I don’t believe in would be if it were real, but it’s better than none at all.