President Human

I will not lie. It took me until late February/early March to put together the words “President” and “Trump” without wincing. But I’m over that now. I mean, my gosh, I live in Goochland County, one must deal. The bigger struggle, though, is to deal with the fact that Donald Trump and I are actually related. Not like second cousin on my uncle’s side twice removed related, but related in the sense that Donald Trump and I – we’re both human beings. As much as I’d like to disavow the fact, Donald Trump is human – like me, like you. Human. Same species, same basic genetic code. Donald Trump: regular human, regular guy.

This appealed to a lot of folks in November, of course – a regular guy, tweeting just like you and me, speaking his mind, confident, brash, maybe sometimes a little insensitive, or racist or sexist. Just like me. And you. When you think about it, Donald Trump might be the first really human president in recent memory.

Which is to say this – Trump displays some basic human traits that other presidents were able to suppress, and able to rise above. Take President Obama: a shining example of how an individual can rise above basic human impulses of fear, pride and hatred. It was all “no drama Obama” all the time. Cool, collected and inspirational, but very much above the usual human type. Despite the fear and hatred surrounding his Presidency he “went high”. 

Which is also to say this: being a regular human president is not a good thing. This is because humans, if you want to know the truth about it, are not good. In Protestant circles we call this “human depravity” or “original sin”, something for which our modern world has little use.  Let those old Protestants suck their sour lemons. We believe in humanity, and inevitable progress and the triumph of the human spirit. But that bedrock of Christian belief – humans just can’t save themselves - continues to stub a number of toes in our march ever upward. Many will refuse to recognize the common humanity that we share with President Trump for exactly this reason – to do so is to throw doubt on the concept of shared human goodness and inevitable human progress.

A lot of folks developed an outsized faith in President Obama partly because he portrayed something greater than what we usually are. He showed us that there is a way to rise above petty self-interest, knee jerk proclivity towards seeing the world through our own blinders and lashing out whenever we feel our pride or dignity is threatened. President Obama showed us that humans have the ability to be more than the sum of our instincts and emotions. But the outsized faith that some had in Obama transferred into an outsized hope in humanity, a hope that there is something inevitably good and progressive in the arc of human history.

Donald Trump brings us back to reality. Brazen in his humanness, he is a reminder that the arc of human history is just that – if you arc far enough along, you’re back to where you started.

So as much as I tried to ignore the reality of a Trump presidency, I’m now approaching at it as a four year lesson in humility. I am humbled by the recognition of parts of my own humanness and fallenness in this man: a wall to keep the stranger away? A travel ban to make America a little bit more like myself? All of this appeals, if I must be honest. This is not the best part of me, no. The best part of me stretches towards a community that loves the stranger and joins hands with the other. The part of me to which Trump speaks is not my best part, but it is a human part of me, a part that cannot be quenched, a dark candle that casts only shadows.

Who will save us from this wretched condition? Not a human president, and not even a super-human one. This is the message of Christianity, just in case anyone’s investigating this Easter season – a) we need saving, b) we can’t do it ourselves, c) God loves us enough to have done it for us. Not that we revel in our fallenness, not that we don’t believe that humans are capable of amazing beauty and acts of sacrifice, not that we don’t believe that as a whole, we can make progress, real progress in human rights and accommodating others. But any progress we make as a society must never been misinterpreted as progress made in the human heart. Progress in society generally depends on laws, not the human heart. Quite often those laws are erected as a bulwark against the hearts of humans who, while not all bad, have little trouble in breaking bad. The good thing about Christianity, the true thing about it, is that we look to Jesus who broke into the arc of human history, not to show us how to save ourselves, but to give us reassurance that one day, by His grace, the arc will no longer curve downwards.