“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s” – Matthew 22:21
“President Trump is evil incarnate; Charlie Kirk deserved to die; all conservatives hate women.”
It’s not hard to find someone willing to defend these things publicly. This kind of speech is intense, violent, unrestrained by reason or civility, and a complete indulgence in one’s own emotional turmoil. Bishop Barron has commented on this phenomenon, saying, “When will is emphasized at the expense of reason, dialogue tends to devolve into oppression and violence, one will simply asserting itself against another.”
Such emotional and unrestrained rhetoric is not a strategy, but a sickness. By speaking so frequently without self-restraint, the left’s particularly outspoken representatives have lost the ability to engage in measured dialogue. When emotional indulgence flares up to this degree, intellectual integrity is sacrificed—the set of logical rules and civil courtesies that characterize good discourse are tossed aside. But the biggest problem with this disease is that it is contagious.
One of the most disheartening things about the modern right is how frequently conservatives undermine their own cause. It is too easy to find conservatives brutally demonizing the left, demonstrating the same emotional self-indulgence for which they write off their opponents. Worst of all, conservatives characterize their angry fits as “righteous indignance.” In doing so, conservatives stoop even lower than the left—they commit the same sin, but in the name of Christianity.
“Wasn’t Christ angry when he flipped tables? Didn’t he call the Pharisees snakes?” Yes. He did so without experiencing passion, while loving and dying for the individual sinners he condemned, and with authority to judge as fully God. Few and far between are the conservatives who meet those first two criteria; even more rarely do they meet the third. So let conservatives be strongly principled, uncompromising on moral issues, and courageous to defend the truth. But let us not indulge in the same rage-fuelled muckraking, hounding the left for their speck and ignoring our plank. If we claim to represent Christian values, then our fall from grace not only undermines our politics, but more grievously, our faith.
Demonizing is only one half of the problem. We can treat people like demons, but we can also treat them like gods. While it may seem kinder, it is just as dysfunctional to idolize a man, either because he is on your side or merely because he is your enemy’s enemy. C.S. Lewis warned against this tendency in his Four Loves, writing, “We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons.”
This struggle is perhaps most prominent in the American public’s rhetoric about President Trump. Anyone who uses social media has seen the photoshopped images of Trump being guided at his desk by Jesus Christ—and this was only ramped up following Trump’s assassination attempt. I myself have known many conservatives who, at that point in Trump’s campaign, would have happily died on his hill, defending Trump as thoroughly above reproach. Trump’s trial made him a martyr, and his survival was taken as Jesus condoning his platform.
But of course this didn’t last. In light of Trump’s shifting policy on abortion and his relationship with Middle Eastern powers, “Trump-at-all-costs” conservatives have been forced to double-down or jump ship.
Some Republicans, in whose lives Trump plays a godlike role, shifted their positions to follow their leader. Those who were once vehemently pro-life waffled and softened their conviction on the issue as soon as their leader did.
Other Republicans, upon finding that their candidate was not in fact above reproach, suffered a grim devastation. This phenomenon reminds me of when a lifelong Christian loses their religion. The young atheist begins to disparage God and his followers, bitter and disappointed by the one who should have been the solution. The same happens to “fallen away” Trump supporters—their rhetoric becomes radically bitter, calling Trump a “Jewish shill” and “cuckold.” Barely six months earlier, these same people were sacrificing their personal relationships in defense of the man they now despise.
All of this political turmoil, in-fighting, and disappointment is only natural when a man is treated like a god. And our inoperably violent political “discourse” is only natural when a man is treated like a demon. The only way back to sanity is to recognize that Trump is neither a god nor a demon. He is, if you like, a Caesar.
Trump is “great” in the way that Caesar was—a rightful and powerful authority, unto whom his “things are owed.” As president, he is owed legal obedience as well as a certain civil respect. And, as one nearly always sees in great worldly leaders, he is not above the usual worldly vices.
We find ourselves, strangely, in the same cultural problem as Rome in the age of the Caesars. At the height of the Roman Empire, right before its fall, people spoke of the Caesars as though they were gods. This apotheosis was the product of the people’s patriotic zeal and the emperor’s god complex. It came about when the Roman Empire was at the height of its physical luxury and political power. The period was also marked by a decline in cultural virtue. Perhaps our situation is even more similar than we would like to admit.
Pliny the Younger, living under Emperors Domitian and Trajan, wrote: “Nowhere should we flatter [the Emperor] as a divinity and a god; we are talking of a fellow-citizen, not a tyrant, one who is our father, not our over-lord. He is one of us—and his special virtue lies in his thinking so, as also in his never forgetting that he is a man himself while a ruler of men.”
Although his personal vices may remind us of Caligula or Nero, President Trump is not a demon, but a man. And though his political successes and ambitions remind us of Julius Caesar or Augustus, President Trump is not a god, but a man. The Roman Empire began to collapse as soon as they blurred those lines. Let us not follow their example.
James Whitaker is a graduate student with the theology department. Before coming to Notre Dame, he studied classics at the University of Virginia. You can reach him at jwhitak5@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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