The peril of false idols
On the morning of Jan. 5, a best-selling Christian author posted a picture of the Egyptian Coptic martyrs who were beheaded on a beach in Libya in 2015. Above the photo, the author asked: “What price are you willing to pay for what you believe in?”
That’s an excellent question I ask myself often. I’d like to think I would have the courage to die for Christ. But to die for Donald Trump? Because that was certainly how people who saw the tweet interpreted it, given what happened the next day in our nation’s capital, and the many, many tweets about it.
Jan. 6, of course, was the day Congress was set to certify the Electoral College vote for the next president. Usually a mere formality, this year it turned into something far uglier, as we all saw unfold on our screens.
I know it’s a big complicated world full of evil and corruption, but the Trump administration did not make a convincing case that there was election-flipping evidence of fraud — the reason that supposedly drove the so-called patriots to riot in the Capitol. I understand how frustrating politics can be, and as a person who opposes abortion and treasures religious liberty, I’m very worried about a BidenHarris administration. But I also still believe this country’s Founding Fathers were on to something when they laid the foundations of our system of government.
While there were Christian signs and words at the rally that preceded the riot, it’s hard to escape the thought that some of the people there had made an idol of Donald Trump. Idolatry in politics is a bipartisan problem.
“We will never give up. We will never concede. ... Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about,” Trump said. If I believed the election was stolen and clearly no one could be trusted, I might have stormed the Capitol, too.
There are reasonable people who believe the election was stolen, because Trump has insisted it is so. There are reasonable people who believe that we are on the edge of socialism. These people are scared and despairing.
When a protest becomes a mob, we are in different territory. We did see this over the summer when protests over police brutality and racism destroyed businesses. With the Trump rioters, we had the ransacking of the United States Capitol. Can’t we all collectively say this has gone way too far?