Prof. Randall Balmer of Dartmouth University recently posted an opinion pieceat the Los Angeles Times with the ironic title “God Is on Team Trump? Let’s take a quick check with the Bible.” The sarcasm is seen when God is on Trump’s team, not the other way around. Then he proceeds to dismantle -- at least in his mind -- evangelical support for Trump.
He starts off with more sarcasm that God put his thumb on the scale of the election, so that Trump barely won and only by the Electoral College. Some victory for God! In reply, just because we cannot figure out the details of how God works in an ocean of humanity does not mean God does not have his purposes and works them out. Prof. Balmer seems to assume that if a victory is not a landslide, then God was not at work. Since he wrote a book about evangelicals, he must know that some of them with a more prophetic gifting predicted long before the November 2016 elections that Trump’s victory would stun the world. It did.
Next, Prof. Balmer tackles immigration and summarized some verses in Leviticus and one in the epistle to the Hebrews (since Heb. 13:2 is talking about household hospitality -- not on a national scale -- and the possibility that an angel could be a guest without our knowledge, let’s skip past his wrenching that verse out of context). It is difficult to find mass migration in the ancient world, but let’s assume that millions and millions of immigrants moved into ancient Israel in 20-30 years. And let’s assume that a certain percentage of them raped and assaulted women and children at the border and transported some sort of ancient, mind-altering drugs. Yes, protect the innocent, but there would be nothing wrong with building a wall back then, much as Israel has done today, to good effect. Obama and other Democrats in the past have said there was a crisis at the border. And there is nothing immoral with securing our borders today with a wall or updating the one that is already there. In any case, these are two different contexts, so let’s move on.
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He starts off with more sarcasm that God put his thumb on the scale of the election, so that Trump barely won and only by the Electoral College. Some victory for God! In reply, just because we cannot figure out the details of how God works in an ocean of humanity does not mean God does not have his purposes and works them out. Prof. Balmer seems to assume that if a victory is not a landslide, then God was not at work. Since he wrote a book about evangelicals, he must know that some of them with a more prophetic gifting predicted long before the November 2016 elections that Trump’s victory would stun the world. It did.
Next, Prof. Balmer tackles immigration and summarized some verses in Leviticus and one in the epistle to the Hebrews (since Heb. 13:2 is talking about household hospitality -- not on a national scale -- and the possibility that an angel could be a guest without our knowledge, let’s skip past his wrenching that verse out of context). It is difficult to find mass migration in the ancient world, but let’s assume that millions and millions of immigrants moved into ancient Israel in 20-30 years. And let’s assume that a certain percentage of them raped and assaulted women and children at the border and transported some sort of ancient, mind-altering drugs. Yes, protect the innocent, but there would be nothing wrong with building a wall back then, much as Israel has done today, to good effect. Obama and other Democrats in the past have said there was a crisis at the border. And there is nothing immoral with securing our borders today with a wall or updating the one that is already there. In any case, these are two different contexts, so let’s move on.
Stop Sneering at Evangelicals for Supporting Trump
The religious left is still looking down on conservative Christian peons for supporting imperfect, feisty Trump. Throughout social media and elsewhere, the left accuses us of compromising our faith and standards. Prof. Randall Balmer of Dart...