Dear Mr. President,
In my first letter I began thanking you for some of the ways you’ve been helping me tunnel deeper into God’s love and purpose for me. I hope you’re encouraged to know that your amoral lifestyle is strengthening the moral fabric of at least one U.S. citizen. Though I assume the same is true for millions of us, I’m afraid for a large number of others the opposite is true, those who’ve become even more emboldened to throw off the loving restraints of Jesus’ yoke. But I digress. My letter is to you is about how you’ve influenced me toward my better angels.
In my previous letter, I addressed how you, by way of anti-example, have inspired me to pray more often for government leaders, tell the truth, and live with integrity. I’d like to refer to a few other lifestyle choices of yours that have moved the needle in the right direction for me.
First, there’s the God-awful way you treat people who disagree with you or who are different from you in some way. With you as a counter example, I can’t help but run to the Lord with a repentant heart to remove my own prejudices. Thanks for helping me see my own deficit of kindness and civility.
The way you employ petulant name-calling to dehumanize people on the “other side” gives me pause about how destructive that practice can be, both to the dehumanized and the dehumanizer. You seem to have an inexhaustible supply of bile that can be called up at a moment’s notice to degrade your fellow human beings, not to mention a dictionary-full of insults to go with the bile. You might consider publishing a book someday on it. You could call it: Insults With Impunity. You’ve called your adversaries, “crazy,” “psycho,” “slimeball,” “fat,” “dummy,” “sleazy,” “pencileneck,” “lowlife,” a “maniac,” a “monster,” and a “nut job,” and on and on and on.
“The power of life,” Mr. President, “is in the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Jesus went so far as to say that denigrating name-calling can put us in some serious trouble with God (Matthew 5:22). Still, I’m grateful because when I look at your total deficit of civility I’m inspired to not abuse and belittle my fellow humans after your appalling example.
Sir, your egocentric, which some would call “sociopathic” behavior, is another reminder to me to press into Jesus. When I listen to you I can see on full display the negative consequences of one whose orbit is a circular pattern around himself. Though I don’t understand how one could be so entirely bereft of the virtues of modesty and humility, it looks to me like you’ve turned unbridled narcissism into a goal to achieve instead of an evil to avoid.
My apologies for being so blunt in my critique of your character, but it’s hardly a secret and you seem to experience no shame about it. Self-confidence and courage is one thing (actually two things), but apart from a moral governor of some sort, it’s all too easy to step over the line into arrogance and entitlement. I often have to repent of my own ungodly pride, and your horrific example motivates me to repent more frequently and more deeply.
I suspect that the privilege into which you were born has had something to do with your mobster mentality and your habit of threatening and bullying anyone who opposes you. You’ve been “in charge” all your life and it’s undoubtedly taken its toll. I urge you to give your life to Jesus and let him have his way inside you. In addition, though I claim no expertise in psychoanalysis, I strongly urge you to see a therapist for a minimum of a hundred sessions for your grandiosity, paranoia, irritability, impulsivity, and any number of other dangerous psychiatric symptoms.
In the meantime, again I thank you for this quite nauseating quality of yours, because it makes me want run in the opposite direction and fall into the arms of Jesus who is gradually replacing my own meanness with his kindness.
The way you treat women, Mr. President, is despicable. Not only is the Access Hollywood tape proof of that, but in public your disrespectful attitude toward women is glaring. The way you demean them with vulgar comments about their looks is disgusting. Your multiple marriages and affairs are one thing, but cheating on your wife during her pregnancy with a porn star and then paying her off to keep her quiet is way over the top!
From where I sit, you view women just as objects to be used for your pleasure instead of as co-equal carriers of the divine image. The good news is that your anti-example motivates me to treat women with the respect they deserve as sisters.
When it’s all been said and done, sir, it looks to me that your behavior is never governed by any substantial moral standard. If you have a standard at all it is malleable enough to be form fitted to your desires. It seems to me that you can no more understand the language of morality than a person listening to someone speaking a foreign language for the first time.
While on one hand your behavior awakened a semi-dormant contagion of ugliness and barbarism among many Americans, I believe that God is using your amoral approach to everything from wealth to women to arouse a new devotion among his people (like myself) to model a kingdom way of living.
When I look at you I see a man who has no anchor, no ballast to keep you righted, which makes me so grateful to God for giving us values by which to evaluate our lives. So, thank you, Mr. President for helping me be a better Christian!
My apologies, Mr. President for how long this thank you letter has become, but there are so many areas in which you’ve inspired my renewed quest for personal sanctification. That said, I hope you will permit me one more letter to express my gratitude. I trust that you’re cheered by how your anti-example has done me so much good, and I hope also for the rest of the Body of Christ. Until then, God bless you and God bless the United States of America!
barney wiget 