This election isn’t about politics. It’s about Americans’ religion and ethics | Opinion
I have spent my life studying the development of religions, including five post-high school degrees culminating in ordination and a doctorate in religion. My undergraduate studies specifically focused on religion as a human phenomenon: what makes human beings unique within the animal kingdom, our development of values by which we consciously live. As one anthropologist put it, “What instinct is to animals, culture is to humans.” Our complex cultural values make us uniquely human.
Donald Trump has no idea what it means to be a human being. I mean this literally.
He understands what it means to be a human animal, a sentient being who pursues his appetites for food, water, sex, air, recognition and power. But he exhibits no capacity, or even comprehension, of loving, altruism, service or recognition of the self in the other. He is a human animal with high intelligence, but lacks humanity.
Why would Americans be attracted to such a person? When he was exposed as saying that he enjoys grabbing anonymous women by the genitals, and that episode was followed up by the admission that he thought he owned the women in the Miss Universe contest and could walk in on their changing room while they were naked, he demonstrated that other humans are nothing more than instruments of his satisfaction.
What does it say of some Americans that they identify with such a demonic personality as a leader? Forget his tyrannical demagogic aspirations for a moment. What do they see in him that they identify in themselves and idolize, some proclaiming him divinely sent?
Trump expresses a perversion of the American ideal of not only the loner who forges his own way through the wilderness, absolute individualism without apparent human connection — but also the selfless desire to assume protective responsibility for the other. In this sense, Trump is the antithesis of Christ, the opposite of the suffering servant for humanity. Trump exemplifies instead the reversal of the American hero. He demonstrates exclusively self-interest and rejects all personal responsibility.
It’s not just that he is devoid of ethics. He is devoid of remorse and sympathy as well. Rather, he and everyone else serve him, and the world that stands in the way be damned.
Standing up to Trump is standing up for civilization and decency. It is standing up for love, and caring, and witnessing to the self within the stranger, at least enough to stop their suffering and see the image of God in them.
This is not a political fight. It’s a struggle that asserts that humanity is, as the Bible says, not simply animal, but also little lower than the angels. That is the characteristic Trump lacks: He is the incarnation and the triumph of materialism over humane aspirations that ennoble the spirit, and capitalism over religion.
Our response will both demonstrate and determine whether ethics and religion have power in our lives, or are simply words we mouth to demonstrate civility, but with no real meaning in our actions or character. Let Armageddon begin.