In God We Trust…Or Do We?

Mar 31

I’ve been thinking and writing about how political power corrupts the message of Jesus since at least 2019.

In 2025, I’m thinking about it a lot more.

Since 2016, I’ve been mourning how quickly the tradition that raised me has seemed to throw out the words of Christ in defense of a man who embodies the opposite of Jesus most of the time.

“Means justify the ends. He’s helping us become a Christian nation again. Christians will no longer be persecuted under Trump. He may be rough around the edges, but he’s looking out for us!”

These are the refrains I hear from the very people who told me to trust God above all else. Suddenly it’s felt like the message morphed to “Trust God and Trump.” And I have type a lot of words onto the internet about not trusting the government to do God’s work as a result.

But here’s a disturbing realization I have noticed in myself…

As the government institutions I’ve lived with for my whole life seem shakier than ever, I’m reckoning with the fact that I too have trusted the government more than God. That’s right, the very thing I’m appalled to see in the Trump fans I love, has been sneakily residing in the corners of my own heart. And as the government continues to feel more unstable, I have found myself feeling more hopeless.

In an effort to deepen my trust in God over government, I’ve been thinking more deeply about the world Jesus entered into and how he chose to act within it.

As a born-and-raised evangelical gal, I know for a fact that we (white evangelical Americans) don’t talk about Jesus being born into a state of oppression nearly enough. As a majority culture human in a majority culture church, we tend to paint Jesus’ day-to-day life to look more like ours just without access to Amazon or motorized vehicles. We think Jesus operated as a decent Roman citizen who practiced Judaism and then decided to “improve” on his religion of origin by being the prophesied savior. We think that the people who followed Jesus knew that he was on a “soul saving” mission the whole time – a call of disembodied, hyper-spiritual pursuit. We, good American Christians, whitewash Jesus so he could also be a good American Savior.

But, that’s not the entire story of Jesus. In fact, it’s barely a fraction.

Jesus was born into oppression. He was part of an oppressed and exploited people group. It was so bad then, that Bethlehem lacked any men of Jesus’ age. Because of him, the oppressive government killed all of his Bethlehem peers as infants. (Thanks to Emily P Freeman for pointing me toward Kelly Nikondeha’s observation of this reality in her book “The First Advent In Palestine”) Jesus lived his whole life aware and awake to the injustice being placed on the shoulders of his people.

Jesus also entered into a people group’s longing for justice and restoration that had stretched on for hundreds of years. The Old Testament chronicles the story of the Jewish people who are longing for safety and security. They had their ideas of what this should look like. A strong king, a big temple, and a solid wall – three things God didn’t seem quite as obsessed with according to the prophets.

This is the historical moment into which Jesus was born. A child who only heard tales of a free kingdom of Israel. Multiple generations ahead of him lived oppressed. The people had been longing for a new Moses-type figure to lead them out of oppression, and the target this time was the Roman government. To the average Israelite of Jesus’ time, Caesar needed to go, and they needed a savior to come along to make Israel great again.

I say all of this to point out this fact: if Jesus had wanted to establish God’s sovereignty through political power, he could have.

Let’s revisit Jesus’ temptation in the desert (Luke 4:1-12) – a spiritual exercise he willingly chose before jumping into his public ministry. Why? Because Jesus’ example in the desert is helping me to divest my trust from government and back to God.

To set the stage, Jesus went into the wilderness for 40-days and nights and ate nothing. This time of fasting and seeking was a long exercise of self-denial and seeking God. Then suddenly, a mysterious spiritual Tempter comes along and offers 3 tests.

Temptation 1: Turn this stone into bread.
Jesus hadn’t eaten in a very long time at this point. Wandering in the desert for a long time feels like the best illustration of food insecurity one could have. He couldn’t just jump a train to the nearest fast food joint and get it over with. No, Jesus would have to walk back to civilization and ask someone to feed him when he finished this practice. Relying on his feet and the strength of God alone to get him there.

It was at his weakest and most insecure that the Tempter shows up and asks Jesus to use his power for his own gain.

This temptation seems the most harmless on the surface. It was Jesus’ power that could transform a stone into bread. In fact, we know that Jesus would mess with the chemistry of water at a wedding party too, so why not do it to a rock when he was hungry? I think we like to interpret legalistically about fasting in this section of scripture. But what if it was more than the legalism of a fast? What if this temptation is about using the power God has trusted you with for your own gain?

There’s lots of dogging of Trump-voters for ushering in the potential demise of the Constitution over the price of eggs, and this first temptation of Jesus might reveal why this feels so sinister in our souls. We used the power of our vote to protect our pocketbooks over people – a self-serving use of power.

This leads me to ask myself, how am I using my power to serve myself? Where am I unwilling to look at how I use the same playbook?

As we sit in the reality of rising inflation and steeper economic insecurity, I feel the pit in my own stomach deepen. In fact, I said out loud to my husband the other night, “What if taking the last 3 years to heal emotionally and spiritually instead of relentlessly pursuing financial security was the wrong choice?”

When I type it out, I feel a sense of shame. But in all honesty, my fear is real. What if my choices, the ones I’ve made thinking I’m following God, lead me to be even more financially insecure than we are right now?! Who do I trust more? God or my money? Wait, was I voting the opposite way because of the financial security too? Am I operating from the same soul space as the people I roll my eyes at who voted for the price of eggs? A sobering question to consider.

Temptation 2: I’ll give you all the Kingdoms of the World
We over-spiritualize this temptation in order to keep our feet out of Jesus’ sandals too. We read this and think “OF COURSE Jesus shouldn’t worship THE DEVIL! He would have ruined his ministry before it even began!” But let me put it to you this way…

If Jesus had taken the Tempter up on this one, couldn’t he have then used that amassed power to further God’s agenda in a faster, clearer way across the globe? If Jesus had become the new Caesar, he could have enshrined God’s law into the law of the land one decree after the other. He could have had the weight of the Roman army at his disposal ensuring people understood what he meant with certainty and then obeyed accordingly? Couldn’t Jesus have ushered in the promised “new heaven and new earth” in his earthly lifetime using the means of political power? Would the means have justified the ends?!

As you’re reading this, if you aren’t MAGA, you are clapping and pointing your finger at every evangelical leader who has said “I don’t agree with his methods but you can’t argue with the results.” Which, fair. If you are MAGA and you’re reading this, and you’ve used this line of thinking I hope you’re uncomfortable! Following the way of Jesus demands our discomfort often.

Now I’ll flip the script.

I admit that as a US citizen I really didn’t know about USAID until Elon started tearing it apart. When I learned what we as a nation were able to do with such a small fraction of our budget, I was pretty indignant about dismantling it. Now, as the DOGE machine keeps tearing through the social safety nets that care for people abroad as well as here at home, I find myself feeling hopeless.

People will die. Kids will go hungry at schools and summer camps. Life-saving disease treatments and vaccinations are being halted. Even mosquito nets will stop being distributed. Humanity feels like it’s going backwards.

Wait…do I really believe that God can work without the weight of the US Government? The hopelessness I feel in my guts is telling me that I don’t.

To clarify, I’m not saying that as a Christian we should celebrate the shuttering of life-saving government initiatives. In fact, I think we should mourn anytime human life is endangered or lost. What I am saying is that as Christian citizens, we can celebrate and advocate for the Christian principles of honoring human life through government action, AND we should continue to care for others as if these government programs don't exist.

The US Government is a complicated beast. It is Empire. What’s makes USAID sketchy as a Christian isn’t the distribution of condoms overseas, but the fact that USAID is a function of soft power meant to keep our seat as the leader of the world. Caring for the world’s poorest is somehow tied up in the same strategy as the placement of our nuclear warheads. The means justify the ends?

The question I’m asking myself (and that a lot of my MAGA friends and family are asking me) is where have I turned a blind eye to the evils of the US Government when it was functioning in a way that my brain was ok with? What does it mean to be more consistent in my demands for care for the poor? What does my participation look like as a person who is trying to model her life after Jesus’?

3- Exploit the angels for your safety
This last temptation is just plain weird to me. The Tempter says to Jesus “jump off of here and prove that the angels won’t let you die.” What a flex that could have been? The Tempter was acknowledging that Jesus had a very important mission. That he believed God wouldn’t let Jesus die until it was really time. Jesus could have asked the angels to show up and show off for him again, what harm would it have been in the middle of nowheresville desert land?

Again, we love to spiritualize the situation right? We see the denial of this temptation of Jesus dominance over the spiritual reality. A “yeah the angels will do what I want them to, but I don’t want them to do that” kind of statement. But what if it’s more than that? What if Jesus respects the contribution of the angels and sees them as worth protecting not exploiting?

In the last decade, we are seeing a trend of abused, burned out congregants shining a light on the evangelical machines that chewed them up and spit them out. From the sweeping sex abuse scandals of the Catholic and Southern Baptist Churches, to the emotionally abusive “get on the bus or get run over by the bus” atmospheres created mega-personality pastors, survivors are raising their voices more than ever before. If you have been part of the American evangelical church for a while, chances are you’ve supported a dangerous, toxic leader at some point or another. Maybe you attended their churches, bought their books, or just listened to the podcast - the problem of exploiting people “for the mission” or covering up abuse “for the good of the church” is a pervasive systemic problem that demands our attention.

These abuse-perpetuating hierarchies we see modeled in our churches were a construction not touted by Jesus but established by Constantine when he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Before Constantine, Christianity was a network of people working together to care for the people around them. Sure there were thought leaders and original sources like Paul and the disciples, but all in all there wasn’t a large chain of command that drove the growth of the early church. Maybe this was the point Jesus was trying to make.

In Jesus’ life, he didn’t spend time cozying up to the high priests and law-makers. Nope. Instead he spent his time empowering the people they disempowered and rejected. Jesus flipped and then leveled the playing field of authority. Jesus trusted tax-collectors, women, and lepers with his reputation. This would be like Jesus trusting drug-dealers, women, and transgender people with his message today (surprise surprise, trusting women hasn’t changed in all these years). Jesus called the Pharisees and Sadducees snakes and vipers (liars and cheats). This would be like calling the Southern Baptist Convention and its leaders a religious scam & grifters today.

Are you starting to see why they killed instead of crowned him?

Jesus looked at the exploitation of people in order to protect the powers at the top as vile and he refused to take part. Instead of sending people away hungry in the desert (a risk to the health of the crowd) Jesus bent the laws of physics to feed tens of thousands of people with 5 loaves and 2 fish. Instead of letting a woman be killed for her scandalous sex-life, Jesus wrote something in the sand that scared off every religious zealot who carried stones to throw. Even when choosing his disciples, he chose the overlooked instead of the indoctrinated.

In Jesus’ very ministry, he modeled a life of wholeness and care. Jesus would work, heal, and teach only to retreat and replenish alone. His disciples were constantly trying to speed him along, and he resisted and showed them the way of whole, anchored-to-God-not-mission leadership.

And so this leads to questions for Christ-followers on both sides of the aisle. How am I sacrificing my health and wholeness for the “sake of the mission.” Why is my sacrifice more needed than Jesus’? What does a life lived in sync with calling while rejecting the exploitation of myself or others look like? Where am I wearing a Saviorism complex? Where am I platforming a Savior that isn’t Jesus? What systems am I part of that are fracturing people and working to cover that up? Where can I work to see abundance over lack and how does this encourage my patience with the process? What does healing and wholeness look like for me and my community in 2025?

Download A Guide For Seasons of Uncertainty

Listen, 2025 looks like a bunch of uncertainty no matter which side of the US political aisle you sit on. Will the economy rebound? How many innocent people will get caught in the cross-hairs of “mass” efforts to restore some sort of imagined greatness? Will the courts be able to stop the agenda? Will we be able to trust any part of the US government ever again? The answer to all of these questions is a big fat I don’t know.

So instead of trying to find your footing in the seismic shifts of our national reality, let’s work to find our footing in the promises of God. A God who refuses to dehumanize. A God who rejects political power as means to Their end. A God who refuses to exploit anyone for the good of the mission. A God who invites you to live freely and lightly, no matter what extent of freedom your citizenship offers you.

Yes, let’s sink our roots deep into the Living Waters that will sustain us as temples fall and kingdoms crumble. And then as we stand and as we act, may we offer life, shade, and sustenance to a world desperately searching in all the wrong places.