My Enemy and Me

There is a prominent American businessman and politician who I consider my enemy. He's more than just prominent, actually - he's the most famous man in the world, and has been for at least the past eight years. I consider him my enemy not because his politics differ wildly from mine - if that were the criteria for being my enemy, I'd be absolutely miserable and fearful with my endless "enemies list" - but because he has consciously, deliberately, and unrepentantly led many of my brothers and sisters in Christ into blatant idolatry. 

He has nudged them over the edge into treating Old Glory like a golden calf, to putting the Constitution (or at least selected snippets from it) on the same footing, or even above, the Holy Scripture, and his cult of personality has led them to believe his nationalist doctrine is inseparable from Christ's, making many Christians agents of confusion, paranoia, hate, and fear, all of these things encouraged and stoked by this mogul and politician to further his own exaltation and glory.

This makes him my enemy.  

At the moment, my enemy is embattled by an avalanche of legal woes. He was found liable of sexual battery last year in a civil case, in addition to defaming the woman who brought the suit. More recently he was ordered by a judge to pay a $454 million penalty in a fraud lawsuit (currently on appeal). He has also been indicted for felony conspiracy, several more counts of various forms of conspiracy in a separate trial, violation of the Espionage Act, and falsifying business records in relation to a hush-money case.

Some of these crimes are punishable by prison time.   

Legal woes usually carry financial woes, and my enemy, rich as he is, has made it clear he cannot pay the $454 million penalty mentioned above, much to the delight and cruel glee of others who consider him their enemy. He's resorted to selling an incredibly tacky patriotic sneaker and a special Bible to help raise money (allegedly). Many of his followers have started GoFundMe accounts - mind you, he is a certified billionaire - to help him as well. This is another symptom of the idolatry into which he's led many people.

It's been very difficult for me to remember God's command concerning our enemies - to love them, to pray for them and bless them (Matthew 5:44). It's been particularly difficult to adhere to an instruction on enemies that's found in the book of Proverbs; through Solomon's pen, God instructs us, "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; lest the LORD see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him."

It's been a challenge not to rejoice in the irony that my enemy once condemned the alleged crimes of a former opponent, calling her "crooked" and reveling in the chant "LOCK HER UP!", and now, eight years later, he's the one with a mugshot - the only person of his former position to have a mugshot, in fact.

Though the likelihood of the ultra rich and powerful being found guilty of serious crimes is still a slim one in the United States, not many would disagree that we've entered the strangest and most surreal era in American history yet: many aspects of our society are not as they once were, meaning his conviction could become reality. My enemy's followers and supporters would vehemently deny his guilt if convicted, so long as he retains a certain letter in parentheses after his name. Not withstanding those lusty howls, we could see the first time a man who's occupied his former position has been convicted of a felony and, maybe, sent to prison. 

If this happens, I must not rejoice at his downfall, as much as he himself asked for it in his insistence on the spotlight and the intense scrutiny of one's public and private affairs the political spotlight brings. I can rejoice that justice has been done, I can rejoice for the degree of justice received in civil court by the victim of his sexual battery and defamation, but I mustn't rejoice in the fact that my enemy has begun to crumble as a human soul. Before I was saved by Christ, I too could have found myself in the very same situation: we who are saved "once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works" (Colossians 1:21). If I stray from Christ this very day, I could become just like my enemy, not only in my sin, but in my downfall.

After Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, blasts of cannon fire were sounded in jubilation. General Ulysses S. Grant ordered the noisy celebration stopped - the enemy was defeated, ridden away with shoulders slumped. It was enough. The Union was saved. Humiliation and mocking were not necessary.

I hope, if my enemy stumbles and falls into the ether of defeat, I forego the cannons and taunts, knowing the time is better spent in prayer and in servitude for the healing of my country.