Contrary to popular opinion, having God on your side, as Donald Trump claimed he did after the failed attempt on his life, is no piece of cake.
One would think that the companionship of the divine makes for smooth sailing. In fact, the God of the Bible prefers rocky roads that culminate in crucifixion. Simon Peter, who definitely knew God was on his side, ended up upside-down on the cross.
One doubts that Trump, who says the Bible is his favorite book, and his faithful running mate JD Vance fully appreciate the stormy seas that God has likely planned for them in the months ahead.
Many commentators have pointed to the obvious fact that Trump’s personal history and lifestyle aren’t exactly consistent with the Christian values he claims to espouse. But that was all before Trump had his Pauline conversion — possibly as the bullet whizzed by and his first, ungodly, reaction was to raise his fist, not to cross himself — and realized that God was on his side: presumably, both in the sense of standing next to and protecting him from harm and in the sense of supporting his political agenda.
This is potentially dangerous terrain for Trump. Sure, God has now cast his lot with Trump, and that’s great for him and his MAGA supporters — especially as that must mean that God has read the Republican Party platform penned by Trump and approves of it. But having God at your side all the time is no fun. If nothing else, He will want to make sure that his devotee obeys all Ten Commandments — not just when it suits him, but all the time, especially in the gilded rooms of Mar-a-Lago, when the media aren’t watching and good behavior should come naturally.
Will God be happy with Trump’s self-identification as a “non-denominational Christian” or will He now insist on a bit more clarity? After all, is Trump on the side of the wheat or the chaff? His wishy-washy self-identification sounds like wanting to have his cake and eat it too.
In any case, now that God is on Trump’s side, nothing else but Trump’s willingness to abide by God’s precepts really matters or should matter — above all to his disciples. What are petty human affairs compared to the infinity and majesty of God?
But that means that Trump, like all self-declared Christians, must be judged less by his political vision and more by his ability to lead a good Christian life. We generally eschew discussions of God in policy debates, but Trump’s alliance with the Almighty makes such a discussion imperative.
The German sociologist Max Weber insisted that the ethic of responsibility is ultimately incompatible with the ethic of the Sermon of the Mount, and that the policymaker has no choice but to opt for the former. Not so Trump. His place is on the Mount, next to his God.
The same holds true for JD Vance. He converted to Catholicism, claims to be a devoted believer and is apparently familiar with several Catholic philosophers. At the very least, Vance must “love his neighbor as himself.” That’s hard in the best of circumstances, but refusing to follow this core precept is not an option.
One can’t be a Christian and state, as Vance did, that “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” That’s like saying that I don’t really care what happens to the millions of poor, hungry and oppressed people in the world. It’s one thing to say that I care but can’t do anything about it, or that I care but can only affect things on the margins. It’s quite another to express complete and utter indifference to massive human suffering.
In Ukraine’s case, Vance is effectively saying he doesn’t care that tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children have been, and still are, subjected to the horrors of war and genocide. Even Pope Francis, who has knee-jerk pro-Russian sympathies, has expressed outrage at the suffering and wants it to stop. Vance, in contrast, doesn’t care that it may continue for years.
In fact, he’s said as much: “I do not think it is in America’s interests to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine.” How does Vance know that a two-and-a-half year war is never-ending is beside the point — though it does raise questions about his ability to tell time and to distinguish between really long wars, such as those in Vietnam, Israel/Palestine and Afghanistan, and relatively short wars, such as both world wars, which lasted a mere four to six years.
The real issue is that Vance is indifferent to the real length of the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine and the total number of casualties. Once again, he’s entitled to bemoan the loss of life in a pointless war that appears to be going nowhere, but he cannot — as a committed Catholic — claim he doesn’t care.
Trump and Vance may learn that having God on your side is a mixed blessing. They might want to recall that, as the former’s favorite book says, Jesus was strict in his moral demands and modest in his behavior. Indeed, he washed the feet of his disciples, all of whom were sinners.
Hubris, triumphalism, narcissism, opportunism and egoism weren’t Jesus’ style. If Trump and Vance mean what they say about the God that’s on their side, neither should these qualities be theirs.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”