So, in case you missed it, former President Donald Trump was indicted, arrested, and arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Now, I’m not going to go through the indictment or give my opinion on the validity of the allegations. To my mind it doesn’t really matter, big picture, whether or not Trump falsified business records. And it shouldn’t matter to you either. And the reason it shouldn’t matter is NOT because it’s OK to falsify business records—white collar crime is still crime afterall. I have heard a fair number of people playing down these charges, which are essentially one criminal act, as unimportant because, hey, whatever, he just falsified some business records. Well, you try it in your personal business and see how far that gets you next time the IRS audits you. Nor, am I suggesting that politicians should be above the law. I really don’t think they should be.
But what I am suggesting is that I prefer, whenever possible, to live in the world of reality. And in the world of reality there are consequences. And several other people have already done a great job of explaining the social and political consequences of arresting former presidents, so I will simply give you the big picture and then move on to my main point for this morning.
You see, friends, it’s not a good idea to go around arresting former Presidents, especially on trumped up misdemeanor charges. Trump is potentially facing 136 years in prison. Now you might be the most uncompromising legalist in the world but you’d still have to admit that 136 years for a this is unreasonable at best, that 136 years, which is a life sentence, is excessive. But again, this isn’t a good idea. And the reason that it’s not a good idea is this. There is such a thing in this world as retaliation.
I want you to think and think hard—do you really think that there aren’t District Attorneys and Solicitors and Attorneys General in different states and locales who won’t go after Biden? Who won’t go after the Clintons? Who won’t go after Kamala Harris? If you think that there aren’t some Prosecutors in Florida and Texas who aren’t just salivating at the opportunity right now, then you’re kidding yourself.
You see friends, when you break a wall, things come through that wall—sometimes they’re things you want. Sometimes they’re things you don’t. But won’t you don’t get to do is have a wall, anymore. When you put a hole in a wall you no longer have a wall, you have a door.
DA Bragg and his friends in Manhattan thought that they would get to be the Heroes of the Day, Saviors of the Republic, Defenders of All that is Good and Righteous by prosecuting Trump. But insodoing they broke a wall. Nobody has ever gone after a former President like this. And now it’s been done. There was a wall and now there isn’t one. And who knows what’s going to come through that wall now that it’s a doorway?! I can take a guess. And so can you if you try hard and put on your thinking cap. And that’s ugliness. I mean real political ugliness. If you think that politics was dirty and ugly and murdery before, just wait till we raise the stakes! If the cost of being the loser in an election is prison then things are going to get very . . . spicy.
Now, like I said, other better commentators have already spoken to that issue. So now we need to move on to the big point for this morning. And this is a fairly complicated point, so I’m going to give you a short version of the big point now and then I’ll explain it in careful detail.
OK, so, big-point short version: There will be a temptation by Christians who are big on grace to side with the Point-of-Order-Repiblicans and say that even IF the entire weight and force and power of a godless, Leftist political machine is brought to bear against conservative politicians, that Republicans should never ever retaliate, because Jesus would have us to be better than our opponents and to love our enemies. That is a temptation. And it’s stupid. This is a trick. And it’s not a new one. Christians need to have more wisdom than to fall for this.
OK, so, big-point long version.
Now, I said that Point-of-Order-Republicans are going to protest any kind of political retaliation because they are the Point-of-Order types and they’re all about norms and institutions and they care about fair play. And I don’t want to mock these people. They care about good things. They care about extremely important things. Norms and institutions matter in what ought to be a nation of laws! You cannot have a nation of laws without norms and institutions. And you cannot have norms and institutions without people who are willing to lose power before breaking the norms and institutions. You can only have a nation of laws if the men who make the laws love the laws more than they love their ability to make them! I love the Point-of-Order-Republicans. But I think that they have been living in a world that no longer exists for quite some time.
Because we do not live in a nation of laws anymore. Now, some people in some states and cities live in states and cities of laws—but some live in states and cities of cronyism, nepotism, and all manner of corruption. In Manhattan you can commit felony assault after felony assault and get released on bond and get your charges downgraded to misdemeanors and get slaps on the wrist, but Heaven forfend that you falsify a business record!
We live in a nation where Point-of-Order-Republicans are striving to play by the rules while their political opponents threaten to pack the supreme court, add new states, give voting rights to illegal immigrants, get rid of the filibuster, and wield the FBI and DOJ against political enemies. I honor and respect the PoORs for their work in preserving institutions and norms. But we are now living in times where one side plays by the rules (largely not always) and the other side plays by no rules (largely not always).
Now, I was with Youth for Christ for a long time. And over the years I’ve played and refereed a lot of dodgeball. And anyone who’s watched middle schoolers play dodgeball knows that watching middle school dodgeball is like watching a competition in cheating. And every once in a while you get a team full of cheaters versus a team full of kids who (largely) believe in fair play. I’ve seen this happen. You probably have to if you’ve watched enough dodgeball.
Now, when you let the kids call themselves out and you have a team of cheaters against a team of honest kids you’ll notice that the cheaters cheat and the honest kids don’t. Shocking I know. But what’s interesting is that if you let these teams play eachother a few times, the honest kids stop being honest—well not all of them—the most competitive of the honest kids stop being honest. Why? Because they realize that there’s nothing to be gained by playing fairly against a pack of cheaters!
Well friends, the same thing happens in politics. Politics has rules and a lot of them are unwritten rules—they aren’t laws, per se, but they’re norms and practices that everyone chooses to abide by because wise people in the past realized that if you followed these norms and practices that things would be better.
For instance, you don’t arrest former presidents. Does this mean that former presidents are above the law? Well, sort of yeah. But what’s the alternative? American politicians have all understood for nearly 250 years that arresting presidents is dangerous because it makes elections criminal affairs. Much of our system of government was designed and maintained by men and women who didn’t care so much about the good a law could do but by the danger of that law being abused. That’s why we have a system of checks and balances; that’s why we have a system where power is distributed among a lot of people with different roles. But trust me, the reason no president has ever been arrested is NOT because no president has ever broken the law!
And here’s the thing, do I think that the charges against President Trump are ludicrous and politically malicious and demonstrate prosecutorial abuse and gross negligence to the Manhattan community? Absolutely I do. I think this is demonstrably political and it’s gross. I also think that it’s possible that President Trump actually did break New York law. I think it might even somehow be in the realm of possibility that he committed a felony. Maybe; I doubt it, I find it improbable, but not impossible. But even if I were convinced he’d broken New York law, if I were on the jury I would vote for jury nullification. If it were proven to me, as a juror, beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump did violate some law, I would just vote for jury nullification. Why? Because it’s not worth breaking the Federal system over a clerical error. It’s simply not worth it. It wouldn’t make him innocent, it wouldn’t make him not guilty. But it would mean that I as a juror would say that even if he did break the law, the prosecutor had no business bringing this case. This case will do far more harm than good.
Now, maybe right now you’re thinking “but Lukey-poo, nobody should be above the law!” Yeah, that’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t work in reality; which is where I prefer to do my living. Yeah, nobody SHOULD be above the law, but the truth is that some people are and it might be safer for everyone if some people sometimes are allowed to be above it.
Again, you might be saying, “But Luke, you fabulously handsome, silver-tongued, theological virtuoso, if you let some people be above the law some of the time, that sounds like situational ethics. That sounds like relativism.” OK, sure. I call it wisdom. There is such a thing as mangling the hand to save the finger. When we’re talking politics and criminal justice and politics in the real world in which we live where we know there are bad actors and corrupticos then sometimes a prosecution of a powerful person might do more harm than good. Sometimes you need to let sleeping dogs lie. Again, I know that this is going to bother some of you deeply, because you’re thinking that right is right and wrong is wrong and Lady Justice is blind and we should pursue justice without fear of favor and all that stuff. And that’s great stuff and I would love to live in that world. But we don’t. And wiser people then me, people who have dedicated their lives to the law and to this country have foregone arresting a president because they knew that once that happens all bets are off.
Arresting a president is a crossing of the Rubicon; it’s passing a point of no return. And as I say all the time, genies don’t go back into bottles. Now all bets are off; cliché, cliché, cliché!
On April 3rd we lived in a world where American presidents weren’t arrested by their political opponents. On April 4th we stopped living in that world. And we can never go back to the world of April 3rd. And if you think that there aren’t prosecutors in Redstate American who aren’t salivating at the opportunity to take down the Clintons or the Bidens then you need to have your head examined. Friends they are licking their chops.
And now we come to the main point of this morning’s message. There are some very well meaning conservative Christians who are watching this all unfold and they are clutching their pearls and shaking their heads in disgust and wringing their hands. But they are vehemently opposed to retaliation because they think retaliation is unchristian and that it’s going to make things worse. These are the people who would rather let our nation fall into abject tyranny than for conservatives to sink to Alvin Bragg’s level. They, along with the Point-of-Order-Republicans are going to whine and protest and make fine sounding speeches about the violations of norms and institutions. And they will be fine speeches, Lincolnian, even. And they will be so much wind, and the emboldened Leftists and Deepstate will continue to seize and secure power, punish their political enemies, and entrench themselves ever deeper in the heart of this nation. The PoORs will write strongly worded letters while the Leftists imprison their political opponents, while they have the DOJ send the FBI to harass parents at school board meetings, and call Christians and white people terror threats, shut down your churches when there’s a cough going around, mandate that you inject yourselves and children with experimental drugs, protect and encourage the murder of babies, the mutilation of children’s genitals, the corruption of children’s minds, the perversion of our morals, and the erosion of our civil rights.
And a whole lot of good those fine sounding speeches and our O so precious moral high ground will be.
Friends, I want to live in a world where PoORs have power. I want to live in a world where everyone plays by the written and unwritten rules. I want to live in a world where politics brings out the best in people. I want to live in a world where equal justice under law is not just a motto but a practice.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. We live in a very corrupt world. And one of the most difficult lessons for very kind and very righteous Christians to learn is that we live in a world of evil, powerful people and that unless some very hard-nosed people make them taste their own medicine they have no incentive to stop!
Brothers and sisters, if the conservative half of this country does nothing to retaliate against their political opponents do you think that the Left will just stop prosecuting conservatives? Out of niceness? Because the job is done and there’s no one left to prosecute. If you believe that then I’ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona I want to talk to you about. The only way to stop a bully is to punch him in the face and teach him that there’s a price to be paid for that kind of behavior and he needs to think long and hard about whether he is willing to face those kinds of consequences.
But this requires a good deal of theology to defend, so I invite you to join us again next week when we talk about Christianity and political hardball.