Political Wins as God’s Will

Albeit homo sapiens, which in Latin means the wise species of humans, we have a tendency to outdo ourselves on our petty, partisan perches in pontificating on God’s will, as if we know it even though we can merely believe in God, rather than know God, here defined as the Abrahamic deity—a supreme being within (immanent) and beyond (transcendent) Creation. This “beyondness” is of the sort that goes beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotions, and even intuition. Because God’s will is not based in Creation since God is the Creator, the matter of that will can only be a matter of belief rather than knowledge as far as we are concerned, and that belief must contend with the human discretion that is inevitable in interpreting scriptural passages, which, depending on the verse, may be literal, figurative, allegorical, or symbolic. Even within the Christian Trinity, only the Father knows when the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur. In the Gospel of Matthew (24:36), Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Does this mean that of the three persons (Latin) or manifestations (Greek) of the Christian deity, only the Father is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing: knows absolutely everything)? It would seem so. The Holy Spirit may come through the Son, but only the Father is omniscient, and thus the Godhead. In verse 34, Jesus has just said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Even if “that day or hour” is up to the Father, while Jesus only knows that the Son will come on clouds to judge the living and the dead sometime within the lifetimes of the people to whom he is speaking, omniscience would require even the exact second to be known; otherwise, the knowledge is not complete (i.e., omni). That Jesus is wrong concerning his prediction does not mean that he is with sin; only that he is represented in the New Testament as being of the god-man type. Now, if Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew does not have complete knowledge of when the world will end at the final judgement by Christ himself, then human claims to know the contents of God’s will can safely be relegated as arrogance as if it were on stilts during a flood, for such presumption should be underwater rather than lording itself in pontificating to other mortals. With all this as context, the partisan rhetoric and genuine beliefs of the U.S. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, while he was campaigning in 2026 for Republican candidates for elected office in the U.S. House, can be situated and analyzed from well within the religious domain.

While campaigning, “Johnson said he is grateful for the outpouring of prayers he receives, for him and the country.”[1] The prayers to which he was referring were for the Republican group to retain control of the U.S. House in its next 2-year session, beginning in early 2027. As for his own prayers, he said that he prays for such a win. “And it does say in the New Testament, you run the race to win,” he said, alluding to 1 Corinthians 9:24 to insist, “This is a biblical admonition. So we will.”[2] We will win, in other words, because it is God’s will. The fact that Paul was writing letters to congregations on religious matters means that Mike Johnson’s interpretation that political, even partisan wins can be extrapolated can be questioned in particular on the leap he makes from the religious to the political domain. What sort of win does 1 Cor. 9:24 refer to, and if not a political win, can such a win be included?

Verse 24, in the English Standard Version of the Bible, begins by asking, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” That Paul is referring to an athletic race is clear from the next verse: “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do so to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.” Here, it is clear that Paul is referring to a distinctly religious prize, as it is inherently imperishable. I contend that a partisan win which group controls a legislative body is of the perishable variety because political control can shift again in the future. The verse is situated after Paul has been referring to spreading the Gospel. In verse 21, Paul writes of evangelizing outside of Judaism, “that I might win those outside the law.” Verse 22 ends with, “that by all means I might save them.” Paul’s orientation here is to soteriology—to saving souls by bringing to Christ Jesus. This is indeed an inherently imperishable prize, and thus the inference that such a win also applies to retaining political control of a legislative chamber is invalid because the latter—political control—can be all too fleeting for those who enjoy such power, whereas, Paul might say, the power of Christ is everlasting.

If this analysis holds water, then Speaker Johnson’s assumption that it is God’s will that the Republican group retains control of the U.S. House in 2027-2028 is dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary from a distinctly religious standpoint. Similarly, the Crusaders who believed that they were killing Muslims in the Middle East and even eastern Christians in Constantinople for Christ were utterly mistaken, especially as Jesus preaches in the Gospels that people should be compassionate, even merciful, toward enemies, rather than killing them, which, by the way, is also in violation of “Thou shalt not kill” in the Ten Commandments. Even as late as 2026, Pope Leo countered the U.S. Defense Secretary’s claim that the U.S. was bombing Iran for God by warning that God, which Christians believe is love, should not be dragged into justifying war.

Not even democracy can be said to be God’s will, even though it is easy to argue that religious free-will and political liberty are mutually consistent. Conflating a distinctively theological concept with one from political philosophy, and even assuming that one leads to or justifies the other can be problematic. Confusing political communism with economic socialism, Speaker Johnson said in the midst of the campaigns in 2026, “I pray for God’s will. And I believe God’s will is for us-and not the communists—to be in charge of America.”[3] That he was mischaracterizing the liberal democrats’ position in favor of universal health-insurance through Medicare for all Americans as not only the state owning all of the means of production (i.e., every industry) but also as political communism, which means political dictatorship rather than socialist ownership of industries, renders his prayer nonsensical at best because the Democratic group was not for political dictatorship. God would perhaps scratch “his” head and in hearing Johnson’s politically partisan prayer, quickly conclude that Mike Johnson must either be confused or mendacious in using rhetoric, besides being wrong in assuming that God itself is partisan, and thus favors the Republican group over the Democrats. Labeling even the self-styled Democratic socialists as communists, or even just as wanting to nationalize every industry rather than just expanding Medicare to all Americans, violates the Commandment against bearing false witness, which applies even to political campaigning.

In general, reaching over from the political domain to make use of concepts and practices that are distinctive to the religious domain is fraught with pitfalls because the two domains are not only distinct, but have a unique basis. For instance, political prizes are perishable, whereas salvation of the human soul is imperishable once achieved. In writing of winning in 1 Corinthians, Paul is clearly oriented to distinctively religious wins, rather than to athletic, business, or political wins. In the Gospels, Jesus does not join the zealots because an eye for an eye would only lead to everyone being blind, whereas compassionate acts to one’s enemies, such as Jesus demonstrates in reattaching the ear of a Temple guard after Peter has severed it in anger, ushers in the kingdom of God. Unlike the Last Judgment, of when only the Father knows, the kingdom of God is within a person, in the ability of the proverbial human heart to expand to include and even privilege feelings and acts of kindness to one’s detractors and even enemies; on the arrival of this spiritual condition within, we, by our free will, can decide, albeit with God’s grace to give us a boost. If enough of us, including Speaker Johnson, serve rather than attack or misrepresent enemies, such that inconvenient acts of compassion become the norm, then the kingdom of God could indeed “win.” Russians being devoted to helping Ukrainians, Israelis to helping homeless people in Gaza—in both cases even though the “enemy” has killed even family members—is the kingdom of which Jesus preaches manifested in the world, rather than in an afterlife. Such a kingdom is within our grasp, and yet we are afraid.

As a first step, perhaps religious leaders might serve as models of compassionate,  humbling acts to marginalized victims of human aggression. Even though such compassion does not necessarily involve serving one's enemies, responding to animalistic aggression with acts of humane compassion to victims would highlight that the aggression is two steps of separation from "love thy enemy," and shift the faithful in the direction of such compassionate love as would bring about Christ's peace on Earth. Furthermore, acts are louder than words.

What if the Pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, were to have gone to the border of Gaza in 2026, after years of genocide being perpetuated by hardened hearts,  and actually worked with living victims to alleviate their unmet humane needs? It is said, charity begins at home. Talk is cheap. To be sure, denouncing aggression is better than remaining silent during a genocide or military invasion. The pope would doubtlessly have been counselled at the Vatican against such an overt, risky move, as if picking up one’s Cross were to be avoided—as if one could achieve selfless agape love issuing out in inconvenient acts of compassion without dying to self. The pope could have then gone to Ukraine in the mist of Russia's invasion even though he would have  risked being blown up by a Russian bomb while caring personally for wounded, hungry, or homeless persons. Perhaps the Pope could then have visited the United States to volunteer for a few days to care for impoverished, homeless immigrants. 

Pope Leo would have favored the last task due to his political stance on immigration, so I put that stop last on his trip. Redemption from the convenient congruence of a political ideology and putting compassion first is possible, however.

 For Robert Prevost, the first American pope, ideological disagreement with President Trump on several of his policies cannot be counted out, so to take the next step in ushering in the kingdom of God, Pope Leo could have let go of the self-love that is inherent in any ideological ferver by caring for exhausted and emotionally distressed ICE agents whose efforts to enforce U.S. immigration law were being met with hostile protests. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson, if he was truly seeking to follow Jesus's preachments in the Gospels, could have volunteered to care for wounded protesters on the street, in real time, even though he disagreed with their political position. Both men had the opportunity to serve detractors and thus to lead the world not from self-love, and thus from personal ideology, but rather from love of the way into the kingdom of God as exampled and taught by Jesus in the Gospels, who says therein, "I came to preach the mysteries of the kingdom of God."

The challenge for Pope Leo could be said to be in staying within the distinctly religious, or theological, lane, rather than going off from theology, and thus beyond the limits of his ken, into public policy, as if God takes political positions, and into applied ethics, even concerning AI, as if human dignity were a distinctly religious concept rather than an ethical idea. Ironically, a pope's influence is optimized by coloring within the lines, as per one's education and, relatedly, within one's domain.

In short, the kingdom of God can be at hand at last, in this world, by people feeling and acting compassionately in serving people having an antipodal ideology (i.e., with whom one disagrees), and even people who have been rude and even vengeful, whom one hates. As Peter and Waterman wrote in their business book, In Search of Excellence, stick to the knitting. In other words, don’t get distracted by the temptation to shift lanes into other domains as if they were the same or even inferior to one’s own. Perhaps God “stands by” in silence, as the source of existence itself, just watching Robert Prevost and Mike Johnson dance a very human, all too human, dance wherein each of the ideological partisans presumes to be right. Arrogance on stilts during a flood is difficult to submerge in favor of agape love in service to one's opponents in whatever domain.

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1. Lisa Mascaro, “House Speaker Mike Johnson Draws on Faith as He Fights to Hold the Republican Majority,” APNews.com, October 17, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Christianity on Climate Change

First Reformed (2017) contains fundamental ideas concerning the human condition and wrestles with the relationship between religion and politics.  Ideas play a significant role in the film, hence it can be used in support of the thesis that film is a viable medium in which to make philosophical (and theological) ideas transparent and derive dramatic tension from clashing ideas. In this film, the ideas that clash concern the role of religion in the political issue of climate change—or is that issue primarily religious?

The full essay is at "First Reformed."

The Fire in Notre Dame Cathedral during Holy Week: Divine Retribution?

Just in terms of how the business and political elites reacted to the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the want of a distinctly religious explanation reflected the hegemony of the secular culture in the E.U. at the time. How the incident, which occurred on April 15, 2019, might fit into an established religious narrative was largely ignored, at least by the media reporting on the fire and its aftermath. Instead, the focus was on the impact on French politics and the donations being made to repair the damage. In particular, the matter of billionaires donating a hundred or two hundred euros fueled a debate on the morality of giving so much when giving to the poor could ease economic inequality, rather than on the religious legitimacy of being rich even with the good use in rebuilding a cathedral. The media at least was silent on the question of whether God had exacted divine retribution against the Roman Catholic Church for having pedophile priests and high-ranked clerics covering them up to safeguard the reputation of the universal Church. That the fire occurred during Holy Week makes the lack of any application of the faith narratives particularly striking; what if a fire in a major cathedral of the Roman Catholic Church during Holy Week were in fact, or at least in narrative, a matter of divine retribution?

(source: The New York Times)

Just three days after the fire, even as the state of France was paying tribute to the firefighters who had saved the building’s structure, “a growing debate about how the gothic landmark should be rebuilt” was brewing.[1] On the previous day, the state, which owned the cathedral at the time, laid out a five-year reconstruction goal” after donations of €845 million had already poured in.”[2] François Pinault gave €100 million and Bernard Arnault then gave €200 million.[3] The billionaires’ huge donations gave rise in turn to a debate on the extent of economic inequality in the state, one of the E.U.’s wealthiest. 

In terms of Christian ethics, the virtue of munificence, which had been especially esteemed during the Renaissance, involves large gifts, such as to build a church, and thus necessitated being rich. The virtue of liberality involves smaller donations and thus did not require riches. The rich man could get into heaven after all, as long as good uses are made of munificence. Serving God rather than greed could be inferred from the desire to spend at least a significant portion of a fortune on good uses, such as in funding a church or founding an organization to help the poor. The link between being rich and being greedy had been loosened if not broken by the Christian Renaissance theologians.[4] A person could be rich and yet not be presumed to be motivated by serving money rather than God. This assumption contradicts the assumption that seldom can a person become wealthy without having acted unethically in business. Forget morality; that a rich person could be motivated to serve God rather than money may seem astoundingly naïve to people in a secularized world.

Just in how quickly thoughts turned to the reconstruction in France, and, in President Macron’s words, the “resurrection,” of Notre Dame suggests that, outside of the investigation of whether the cause had been an electrical short-circuit, the question of the religious significance of the destruction was largely missed. Even as some onlookers prayed during the fire presumably for it to miraculously stop, the mere possibility that the fire was divine retribution directed to the Catholic Church because of its child-raping priests and the enabling bishops and cardinals who covered up the rapists within. Such a thought was simply too far from even twenty-first religious thought, not to mention secular thought, to be entertained.

In the Old Testament, Samuel tells King Saul that God is no longer with him; the prophet then anoints David, whom the prophet Nathan will castigate for adultery (and killing the husband). In a prophet role, Jesus points out the hypocrisy of the Temple priests even as he stays away from speaking truth to the Roman rulers. It could be expected, therefore, that followers of Jesus would speak up to ostensibly Christian clerics and even their religious organization. God is no longer with you. Your church (or you) can expect divine retribution for what it (you) has/have done, for no man or organization is above divine judgment. It would have been strange to hear Catholics in St. Peter's Square shouting Repent! to their Church. 

What if God damaged a gem of the Roman Catholic Church, even though the cathedral was owned at the time by the state of France? What if France itself was besides the point? The issue would not have been whether an electrical short-circuit caused the blaze; this type of causation reflects empirical science rather than religious causation, which can be something external or in terms of meaning in the human mind. Nor would the immediate focus have been on reconstruction and the need for “French Unity” as if the destruction were a political matter. The absence of religious debate attests to how far removed secular Europe was from its Christian past. Perhaps that past had never taken root. 

Had the debate been religious, questions would have included whether divine decrees could still happen, and could a religion continue to be viable whose deity does not punish a Church for having prioritized saving its own reputation over justice and the protection of innocents from acts as heinous as child-rape. 

Joe Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI, had written a letter as the archbishop of Munich urging that a pedophile priest not be defrocked because of the damage the scandal would do to the reputation of the universal church. The priest in question was transferred to another parish, where his roles included youth ministry. In September, 2011, two American advocacy groups filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The complaint points to the pope and three other top clerics in the Vatican as having engaged in crimes against humanity for having abetted and covered up the rapes of children by priests. After the pope resigned and agreed to stay within the Vatican in 2013, the complaint was dropped. This is why the conservative pope resigned. Yet he got away with his crimes. "The high-level officials of the Catholic church who failed to prevent and punish these criminal actions," the complaint says, "have, to date, enjoyed absolute impunity."[5] Powerful enough to make a deal with the court's prosecutors, the Roman Catholic Church was able to protect itself (i.e., it's elite), but it may have lost God in the process. Given the lack of self-imposed justice in the Vatican itself, God may have sought to get the Church's attention, including its laity, by means of a fire at Notre Dame during Holy Week in 2019, or the thought of which may have religious significance, or meaning. 

Such meaning transcends satisfaction from moral justice. As Kierkegaard points out in Fear and Trembling, a divine decree may contradict our sense of morality, as it does when God decrees that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, which in a moral sense is murder. As immoral as raping a child is, divine judgment and retribution concerns breaking faith with God (i.e., sin). Too often, sin is reduced to "immoral," even though more is involved that transcends our notions of moral and immoral conduct. 

Religion can be very problematic precisely because religious people believe decrees that contradict morality are nonetheless valid. I write elsewhere that the element of transcendence transcends morality and makes religion distinctively religious.  A belief (not knowledge!) in divine decrees satisfies the transcendent core of religion, yet how many Christians in Paris at the time of the fire entertained the mere possibility that God may have been reacting to the unaccountable acts committed by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church? The ICC couldn't touch the former living pope and three others, but God could touch a gem of the Church, perhaps meant as a wake-up call as the fire during in Holy Week would surely get attention, even just in symbolic terms. Even just in enabling the men in the Church's clerical hierarchy by continuing to attend Mass and tithe, the laity may have been stepping away from God without realizing it. Perhaps God acted to get their attention because they had been so ensconced by the status quo or, frankly, too selfish to give up their local churches. 

To be sure, Isiah claims that God’s ways are not our ways and Jesus preaches that the Kingdom of God is not of this world, so would it be impious even questioning whether a fire at Notre Dame Cathedral is enough punishment for a hypocritical Christian Church that had strayed so, as if with impunity, from Jesus’ preaching on how to enter the Kingdom of God? Because God goes beyond the limits of human cognition and perception, according to St. Denis, we mere mortals can not know whether an event has the divine will behind it. Even the assumption that an event deemed supernatural is religious, or that the validity of religion depends on supernatural events, is problematic. So by asking whether the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral can be characterized as divine retribution, I am not necessarily suggesting the possibility of a supernatural act. I contend that the resonance of the religious meaning could have been felt or at least realized. 

Even if the belief in ongoing divine decrees had largely been vanquished by the time of the fire, whether due to encroachments by secular culture that privileges knowledge over belief, or by the related empirical science, the meaning of outside retribution against otherwise unaccountable crimes of power can still have resonance, even beyond moral agreement. The meaning could be informed by religious stories in the Bible known from childhood, and perhaps even fueled by a human instinctual urge for justice to be applied to power especially in cases in which it resists so. God has left you, Samuel said to Saul. 

It makes sense that the spirit of Christ has left the Vatican and priests if enough of the individuals acted in contradistinction to Jesus' preaching. Whether the intent of those clerics in the church hierarchy who covered up the sexual abuse was to protect the reputation of “the universal Church” or more personally to stay in office, power, like greed, can be at odds with the desire to serve God rather than oneself.

Christian leadership can be in the style of shepherd.[6] What good shepherd would rape a small sheep, or look away in protecting the rapists? Such a shepherd would hardly be a servant of the sheep. Such a shepherd would hardly evince Christian leadership, as such leadership must be consistent with Jesus's teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God.  Rather, such a shepherd would fit Nietzsche's depiction of the ascetic priest, whose urge to dominate is incompatible with an underlying condition of weakness.[7] While neither Nietzsche's conception of strength or weakness fits with Jesus's kind of strength, Nietzsche's conception of strength is closer because it is more selflessly generous than is Nietzschean weakness. The sheer meaningfulness of outside accountability beyond human power being applied to weak clerics who refuse to give up their positions (i.e., power) in spite of the glaring hypocrisy is in line with many of the faith narratives in the Bible as well as a human instinct for justice. Hence the secular reactions in Paris during and after the fire can be said to have eclipsed a distinct sort of meaning, religious meaning, which transcends moral sentiment.

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[1] Aurelien Breeden, “France Debates How to Rebuild Notre-Dame, Weighing History and Modernity,” The New York Times, April 18, 2019.

[2] Aurelien Breeden, “Millions in Notre-Dame Donations Pour In as France Focuses on Rebuilding,” The New York Times, April 17, 2019.

[3] Liz Alderman and Steven Erlanger, “As Rich Lavish Cash on Notre-Dame, Many Ask: What About the Needy?” The New York Times, April 17, 2019.

[4] Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon.
[5] Laurie Goodstein, "Abuse Victims Ask Court to Prosecute the Vatican," The New York Times, September 13, 2011.
[6] Skip Worden, Christianized Ethical Leadership: The Servant, Shepherd, and Steward, available at Amazon.
[7] For the figure of the ascetic priest applied to business ethicists and managers, see my book, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Modern Management, available at Amazon.

Son of God

The 2014 film, Son of God, follows a familiar trajectory well-known to viewers who had seen films such as George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Watching the Passion story yet again, I could not help but take note of the repetitiveness from sheer likeness. Yet one scene sticks out among the usual denouement—that scene in which Jesus in the wilderness, the high priest in the Temple, and the Roman Pontius Pilate with his wife in their chambers pray in their own ways and with differing assumptions about divine intent toward a petitioner. The interplay of petitions plays like a tutorial for the ears and eyes on comparative religion, found here even within a religion.

The entire essay is at “Son of God.”