David and Donald

When I ask Christian friends, particularly evangelicals (whose preachers all look and dress like bankers and stockbrokers) how could they possibly be for electing a man like Donald Trump? They invariably point to ancient Israel's King David, who had men killed to cover up his adultery. But King David, as sinful and ugly as that episode was, was nothing like Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was born into great wealth; at age three his father started a bank account in his name with three million dollars in it. His parents were "not religious," they were amoral. As was he, ever.
King David was born poor, the son of a shepherd, and loved and trusted God.
When the Vietnam War was raging and Donald Trump was draft age, he used up college deferments, then bribed a doctor to say he had bone spurs to stay out of the military. Some patriot, eh?
When David was a poor sixteen year old shepherd, probably no more than five and a half feet tall, the Philistines declared war on Israel. In those days, rather than armies of men, they chose one man from each side to do battle. The Philistines' man was a giant, probably a very muscular seven feet tall, and the Jews were all afraid to go against him, standing a head or more taller and stronger than them, holding a big sword in one hand and a shield in the other.
Except for the kid, David, without armor and armed with a sling, which can hurl a stone at a great speed. He volunteered, and his rock knocked the giant out. David decapitated the giant with the Philistine's own sword, and Israel made David king.
Donald Trump was a liar and a thief all his life, trained by his equally despicable father. He had three wives and cheated on each of them. He bragged about sexual assault. He pleaded guilty to fraud in the Trump University case, and four years later was found guilty of the same crime in a different court over a completely different fraud. He bought a casino in the name of a corporation, bled it dry making millions, then abandoned it to bankruptcy, along with all of the money it owed to people, especially employees. He is and always was a liar and a thief. Some thievery is legal in the eyes of the law.
Then, after he became President, he lost the next election before trying to violently overthrow the government. This evil on top of the evil that Trump had spent his life committing was too much for his friend, Mitch McConnell, who excoriated him publicly before visiting him in Florida to explain how wrong his actions were.
David's friend and advisor came to him with a tale of evil someone in Israel had committed, and David angrily replied "Have him put to death. Who is this man?" His friend softly answered that it was David himself.
Rather than having his advisor killed or imprisoned, David wept, regretted and repented.
Donald Trump obviously regretted nothing, vowing revenge on those who had tried to make him pay for the consequences of his evil. McConnell changed, now supporting the traitor who engineered a failed coup.
Perhaps the evangelicals haven't heard the whole Trump story, as unlikely as that sounds. Or maybe they are just parroting what their mammon-worshiping preachers who look and dress like stockbrokers, who wear Satan's uniforms, said.
But it's not up to me to judge. Well, except this November. It's up to you, too.
3/15/2024