I’ve been away from the keys doing interviews for Live Not By Lies (still going strong, three weeks in). I wanted to point out to the book’s fans two really good online videos about the book. The first is the Dark Horse podcast #50, with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, in which they spend nearly the entire 100 minutes of the podcast talking about the book. You may not know that Bret and Heather are evolutionary biologists, liberals, and atheists — yet they both find a lot to like in the book:

It’s a very rich discussion, all the way through. I will be very surprised if you watch this without subsequently subscribing to their podcast.

The second is a long podcast interview I did with my friend Yoram Hazony, the Israeli scholar, who is a very thoughtful interviewer:

I’ve been away from the keys, more or less, for the past day, because I’ve been doing a lot of press for the book (e.g., I spent a good hour yesterday online with Dr. Albert Mohler, for his podcast), and because I had to drive down to Bayou Lafourche to give a book talk at Nicholls State University (more on which in a separate post). I didn’t get home till midnight last night; after posting this, I’ll turn to approving the seventy-billion comments from yesterday.

On the long drive down through the cane fields, I called a Catholic priest I know, but from whom I had not heard in over a year. He had moved to a new parish, and I was eager to see how it was going. He told me that he had been pleased and surprised by how the people were rallying to his leadership. Their previous pastor had been an older ultra-liberal, and while this younger priest is not political, he actually believes in the Catholic Church’s teaching about abortion and the natural family, and isn’t afraid to teach them. He had wondered if the congregation would reject him, because he is so substantively different from the previous pastor, but in fact, it seems, they were dying for real Catholic leadership. He said they really do seem to appreciate bold, straightforward preaching.

We talked about the problems in the Catholic Church, and he said basically that he has emotionally disconnected from the bishops and the Pope. He obeys them, of course, but he no longer expects leadership from them, only confusion and weakness. He says his mission is to do the best he can to build up his own parish community as a bastion of spiritual strength and resilience for the days to come. I told him that I write about this in my new book, specifically in the story of Father Tomislav Kolakovic, who did not let the discouragement and lack of leadership from the Slovak bishops in the 1940s prevent him from preparing his people for the coming of communist dictatorship.

I suggested to my priest friend that he get my new book, because in it he will find vindication for what he is trying to do in his parish, and also inspiration, and practical advice, for how to go about it. I told him too that if he decides to start a Live Not By Lies reading group in the parish, that he could download the study guide I wrote, for free.

This morning I see on my Twitter feed this essay by the conservative Evangelical pastor John Piper. He seems pretty down about voting for president. He spends the essay confronting fellow Christians who believe that Trump’s sins — he names them — are less destructive to the nation than Biden’s sins. It’s well worth reading, though I don’t share his conviction that Trump’s sins are equally destructive as Biden’s. Trump does not support the right to murder the unborn. Trump doesn’t consider it important to protect the right of children to be jacked up with cross-sex hormones. The beliefs that lead Biden to endorse unrestricted abortion and transgenderism in children are terribly destructive to the nation.

That said, I appreciate Piper’s warning that we Christian conservatives would be fools to downplay or dismiss the seriousness of Trump’s personal corruption. He writes:

Therefore, Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year.

The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow.

I don’t really agree with this. I think Joe Biden is probably a far more personally decent man than Donald Trump. But look at the policies he supports. 

Here’s a real-life example of why you can’t take the full measure of a man by his personal behavior. Thomas Howard, the celebrated convert to Catholicism, died recently. He was a wonderful man. I met him once, in March of 2002, in New York. This was about two months into the church abuse scandal, which had exploded out of Boston, where Tom lived. We were both Catholics, and both very upset about what we were learning. Tom had recently retired from teaching literature at St. John seminary, where the Archdiocese of Boston trained its priests. Tom told me that homosexuality was rampant at the seminary when he was there, and how shocked he was to discover that his best student had a reputation for giving the most expert fellatio in the entire seminary.

If you knew how personally dignified Tom Howard was, you could appreciate how painful it was for him to speak those words.

“Tom,” I said, “did Cardinal Law know about all this?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I told him myself.”

“And he did nothing?”

Tom just looked at me like a deer caught in headlights. I knew that he was very close to Cardinal Law, and held him in high esteem as a man and as a friend. But here, Tom was faced with the fact that the man he knew and loved had been faced with gross moral corruption in the seminary for which he, the cardinal, was responsible — and had refused to do anything about it. Tom was caught in the trap of cognitive dissonance. All the good personal qualities that endeared Cardinal Law to Tom said nothing about how Law actually governed — or failed to govern — his archdiocese. And that led to collapse.

We didn’t talk about it further; I could see it was too painful for Tom. But I’ve never forgotten that, and I learned over and over, in writing about the scandal, that it was easy to be fooled by the personal kindness of bishops and priests. That could be a cover for deep immorality. Don’t forget that everybody loved Cardinal McCarrick.

That said, I don’t at all think that we can dismiss what Piper is saying here about the corrupting aspect of Trump’s public behavior, even if one believes that voting for him is the lesser of two evils. Piper does not say who he’s voting for, if he’s voting for either, but he makes it clear that he finds both unacceptable. He makes it clear that he sees that America has become decadent, not just on the left. He gives this charge to pastors:

May I suggest to pastors that in the quietness of your study you do this? Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom. Then ask yourself this: Has my preaching been developing real, radical Christians? Christians who can sing on the scaffold,

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

Christians who will act like the believers in Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Christians who will face hate and reviling and exclusion for Christ’s sake and yet “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, [their] reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23).

Have you been cultivating real Christians who see the beauty and the worth of the Son of God? Have you faithfully unfolded and heralded “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)? Are you raising up generations of those who say with Paul, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8)?

Have you shown them that they are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), and that their “citizenship is in heaven,” from which they “await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21)?

Or have you neglected these greatest of all realities and repeatedly diverted their attention onto the strategies of politics? Have you inadvertently created the mindset that the greatest issue in life is saving America and its earthly benefits? Or have you shown your people that the greatest issue is exalting Christ with or without America? Have you shown them that the people who do the most good for the greatest number for the longest time (including America!) are people who have the aroma of another world with another King?

I one hundred percent endorse that. I’ve noticed that when I’ve been on radio call-in shows promoting Live Not By Lies, there is usually a Christian caller, sometimes two, who will come in with the idea that the only thing standing between Christians and persecution is Donald J. Trump. I am telling you that even if you vote for Trump, you would be wise not to put false hope in him. Even if he were super-competent and without moral fault, even he could not turn back this tide. This is not primarily a political problem.

Last night at Nicholls State, I learned about a controversy that had burst out on campus this week. Some College Republicans chalked “TRUMP 2020! MAGA!” on a sidewalk there. You would have thought that the Hitler Youth had marched through campus by the reaction of campus lefties. At my dinner table last night was a young female College Republican who had had to go to class that day escorted by a campus police officer, because of all the death threats she received from fellow students. She shared some of the vitriol with me on her smartphone; I’ll be writing about it later.

This is not Oberlin. This is not Yale. This is not Evergreen State in Washington. This is a public university in a small city in a deeply red state. A conservative student had to be protected by a campus police officer just to go to class, because she is a Trump supporter. Her boyfriend is head of College Republicans, and he is black. The racist abuse he has received from other black students over this is beyond vile.

What can Donald Trump do about that? What could any president? There is something profoundly disordered and evil in our culture today. Vote, yes — it’s important. But don’t think for a second that voting is the most important thing you can do to prepare yourself, your family, and your community for the terrible trials to come.

If Father Kolakovic were here, what would he tell us to do? Think about it, and do likewise.