Repent, for the Kingdom of God Is Near

Opinion

by

Baptist News Global | March 3, 2025

For too long, we have given deference to those of you who have supported and enabled Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. We have feared losing relationships, losing family, offending friends, dividing churches. We’ve bristled when you’ve accused us of having Trump Derangement Syndrome, and we’ve kept our mouths shut when we should have pushed back.

We have sought to keep the peace when there is no peace.

Now, we are at the point where we must speak not just from our own thoughts but with a word from the Lord that is biblical and timeless. We stand in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, John the Baptist and Jesus himself when we declare it is time for you to repent of the evil you have wrought.

Yes, evil.

While claiming to care about protecting unborn babies, you have turned a blind eye to the slaughter of living babies in Gaza and Ukraine and all over Africa. And now, you are complicit in taking away essential food aid from starving children and families all over the world. Yes, children are starving, babies are dying and old people are languishing. This is not hyperbole.

When did you do this? When you worshiped and elected Donald Trump as president and set loose his retribution and his minions who now are wreaking havoc in the world. Yes, we warned you this would happen, although we could not envision the massive scale of destruction that would transpire; things are so much worse than even we skeptics feared. You told us we were sore losers and overreacting.

While some still advise we should be kind to you and forgive your vote for evil, I’m not there yet. We cannot forgive those who are still actively harming others. Only Jesus has set that model, praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” as he was being crucified.

“Now you’re having to go through oratorical gymnastics to justify his actions — denying the very reality before your eyes.”

But I’m pretty sure you do know what you’re doing. You intentionally celebrate and voted for a man who is the embodiment of evil, and you intentionally set him loose not only on the United States but on the world. National polling says you like what Trump is doing. And now you’re having to go through oratorical gymnastics to justify his actions — denying the very reality before your eyes.

When the president of the United States turns his back — no, betrays — our longtime allies in order to support another evil dictator, we must speak out. You must speak out. But you have not. Instead, you have found ways to reorder reality to make sense of the nonsense your hero is creating. Obviously, he can’t be wrong, so you must assume you were wrong about the way the world works.

You are wrong about him. He is the problem, not the solution.

Russia is the problem, not Ukraine. Greedy billionaires are the problem, not the working poor. Christian nationalists are the problem, not peace-loving people of other faiths. America First is the problem, not USAID.

We have long passed the point of being able to say there are two reasonable yet different ways of seeing politics. This is no longer John McCain versus Barack Obama. This is Jefferson Davis versus Abraham Lincoln — only worse.

In the American Civil War, there were not two equally justified sides. Pretending both sides were equally virtuous perpetuates what we call the Lost Cause. In reality, one side fought to keep other humans enslaved; the other side fought to free them. It’s that simple. That’s what drove the call for states’ rights and the economic arguments. It all boiled down to human slavery — which is evil.

What the Trump administration is doing today is equally evil because it is throwing millions of people into bondage — economic bondage, food bondage, health care bondage, safety bondage, sexual bondage, political bondage and more. You have set this loose, and only you can stop it.

How can you stop it? By repenting.

“You and they could stop this insanity — if you would repent.”

When we repent of our sins, we turn our focus in the opposite direction and begin working for the good. You alone have a unique voice to be heard by Republican legislators who also need to repent and stop kowtowing to an evil tyrant while claiming he is the messiah. You and they could stop this insanity — if you would repent.

Heed the call of John the Baptist to repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Heed the call of Jesus, announcing his public ministry with these biblical words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus’ ministry was not about making the rich richer or making the privileged more privileged. It was not about taking food from children and firing workers from their jobs. It was not about yielding the church to empire. Nor was it about singling out a tiny minority of people who are different than most and trying to legislate them out of existence. Such things are, in a biblical sense, evil.

This Ash Wednesday, it is time for sackcloth and ashes, for mourning and wailing and repentance for what we collectively have wrought with our votes. In a word, it is time to repent. The kingdom of God is near, and there will be no MAGA caps there.

Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global from which this column is republished. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality.