As the US heads to the inauguration of the man who will be President Donald Trump this Friday, NILS VON KALM reflects on what makes a nation great…
At the time of writing this article, Donald Trump is set to become the 45th President of the United States. The world is about to see whether his campaign promise of making America great again is about to become true.
According to Trump, greatness is about winning, about success, about protecting ourselves and keeping out the other. It’s about being stronger than the rest. It is about power and might.
WHAT FUTURE?: Nils von Kalm argues that the Bible shows what makes a nation great is not about winning and success at all but in fact about caring for all, including the most vulnerable. PICTURE: Pexels
“Part of being Christian is reminding ourselves that the Scriptures speak truth to us about how to live lives of meaning and purpose. And, yes, greatness.”
History has shown that what makes a nation great is not what we often think it is. The United States has the most powerful military in history but according to its own government, 43 million of its inhabitants live in poverty. That’s twice the population of Australia.
Speaking of our own country, Credit Suisse has ranked us, per capita, in the top three richest countries in the world in the last three years. Yet our national depression agency, Beyond Blue, says that in any one year, around a million Australian adults have depression, and more than two million have anxiety. Furthermore, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest research says that one Australian takes their own life every three hours in this country. That is the highest it has been for the last ten years.
Clearly something is wrong with how we define the greatness of our nations.
Part of being Christian is reminding ourselves that the Scriptures speak truth to us about how to live lives of meaning and purpose. And, yes, greatness.
In the Old Testament we are told that Israel was called to be a light to the nations. They were set apart by God to be a chosen people to show the world what God was like.
When the people of God were given the Law by Moses, it was full of commands to look after the foreigner, the widow and the orphan. Many passages in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) talk about practical ways of caring for the disadvantaged. And if Israel was to do this, God would richly bless them (Deuteronomy 15:4).
But over and over, Israel failed. When they failed, their sins were generally about doing injustice and neglecting the poor. The most well-known judgment passages in the Bible are almost overwhelmingly about Israel’s mistreatment of people. For instance, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is famously seen as an indictment of sexual sin. But the Scriptures say that their judgment was in fact to do with their neglect of the poor (Ezekiel 16:49).
It was prophets like Ezekiel who were called by God to bring the nation back to its senses. It was the prophets – strange, eccentric people, who let Israel’s leaders have it in no uncertain terms. Just listen to some of the words of Amos:
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Israel,
even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.”(Amos 2:6-7)
And how about this from Amos 5:21-24:
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
The prophets were pretty clear on what God thought of their ideas of greatness and what God wanted instead. Perhaps the writer of Proverbs makes it most clear when he says in one sentence, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
In the Hebrew language that the Old Testament was written in, the word for righteousness is interchangeable with that for justice. So, Proverbs 14:34 can be translated, “Justice exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people”.
Throughout history it has been shown that a lust for power and an oppression of the poor does not end well. When people are crushed and trodden on for long enough they will eventually rise up. That is part of the reason Trump was elected. He was able to articulate what millions of Americans have long felt, that they are missing out because of the excesses of the elite. It’s just ironic that it was one of those very elite that verbalised that message.
“Throughout history it has been shown that a lust for power and an oppression of the poor does not end well. When people are crushed and trodden on for long enough they will eventually rise up. That is part of the reason Trump was elected. “
The way Trump articulated his message, though, was through the politics of fear. When people are desperate enough, they are open to the exploitation of listening to someone who tells them what they want to hear. The same happened to the Israelites when they wanted a king to rule them. What I see in I Samuel 8 is a chilling analogy of what has happened with the election of Donald Trump. Listen to the prophet Samuel:
“This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.
He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (I Samuel 8:11-18)
Far from draining the Washington swamp as he has declared he would, Trump is filling it with people who have a history of making life harder for the most vulnerable in society, just as Samuel predicted would happen when Israel chose a king for herself.
The problem with Donald Trump’s idea of greatness is that it is insular, demeaning to others, based on success at the expense of the “other”, and self-centred to the point of narcissism. It is anything but greatness as defined in the Scriptures, especially by Jesus Himself. Jesus’ definition of greatness couldn’t be more opposite to that of the President-elect.
When James and John asked Jesus for positions of power in Jesus’ kingdom (Mark 10:34-35), He didn’t rebuke them for desiring greatness. Instead He redefined what it meant. He told them that if they want to be great, that’s fine. Be great in your service of others, be great in your love, be great in your humility.
The Old Testament Law, the prophets, through to Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, all define greatness as something that is counter-cultural to the platitudes we hear from most of our political leaders.
What makes a nation great is not military might, not attacks on minorities and not success or winning. What makes a nation great is justice and compassion, all grounded in love. To paraphrase John’s first epistle, it is love that will drive out the fear that Trump has exploited. Only then will any nation be great.
