Two Eighteen Year Old Boys

 I have recently seen an argument stating that you can tell if a leader is a God given authority when he or she punishes what is bad and praises what is good. Romans 13:3 was referenced, which says, "For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad." 1 Peter 2:14 was also referenced, which says, "punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good". These verses were used to argue that Donald Trump has God given authority and Joe Biden does not. It was stated that during his first few weeks as president, Joe Biden has praised those who do wrong and punished those who do good. Donald Trump did the opposite, this person argued, praising what is good and punishing what is bad.

No specific examples were given so I don't actually know what exact acts were being referred to, but I thought that this person was very bold to speak with confident discernment on all presidential decisions, classifying them as either good or bad without even an inside position for further insight. I also thought that to claim that one president discerned good and bad 100% of the time, whereas the other did the opposite 100% of the time seemed extremely oversimplified and biased.

Anyway, I don't want to continue in a discussion about Donald Trump forever, but I do want to share rebuttals when I think the Bible is being applied in a flawed way. The Bible shouldn't be anyone's tool to use politically. I believe that if it is applied accurately to all situations we face in life, then all will have the chance to see the true character of God, and his kingdom will reign.

I shared two articles in response to this claim. The first was about how Trump reinstated the death penalty at the federal level during his last months of his presidency. This article from DeathPenaltyInfo.org explains how beginning July 14, 2020, Trump pushed for more executions than had been completed at the federal level during the past 50 years to take place during his last six months as president.

In addition to that, I shared an article about the death row prisoner who people most rallied to save, from what I saw.

Brandon Bernard was executed by lethal injection on December 10, 2020 at 40 years of age. He was sentenced to the death penalty when he was 18 years old for destroying the evidence of a murder that a fellow gang member committed. He apparently did not take part in the abduction or murder but was tried beside the 19 year old who did. The young man who committed the murder was executed previously.

This article and others tell about how Brandon had not had one complaint filed about him while in prison, but showed deep remorse. Five of the nine living jurors who convicted him also asked that he be spared. Brandon's legal team tried to delay the decision, but were not given any grace.

On the other hand, we see situations like Kyle Rittenhouse who shot and killed two protestors and wounded another at a racial protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin was released on $2 million bail that people fundraised for. Now 18 years old, he is on tape drinking at a bar and posing with white supremist symbols.

So at the end of 2020, we saw that one reformed man, despite the guilty consciences of the jurors that convicted him, was rushed to the death sentence for the crime of destroying the evidence of a murder he did not commit at age 18. On the otherhand, another 18 year old boy that shot and killed two people is supported with enough money to run 100 schools in Haiti for a year, or do a ton of other important things, so that he be free, at least for awhile. You call that punishing what is bad and praising what is good?

Perhaps it wasn't Donald Trump who got Rittenhouse out on bail, but his stance on this subject is no secret. In fact, I first learned about the hand guesture that represents white supremacy when I read about a man Trump pardoned, who was, like Rittenhouse, pictured celebrating with friends, posing with that hand guesture right after being pardoned.

Around May 2020, I read an article about one of the men Trump pardoned who was in prison for committing war crimes. The article shared interviews of the officers under his lead, reporting that he ordered them to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan and then celebrated, saying how awesome it was. They had done the right thing, turned him in, testified against him at trial, and now he was released, despite them doing what they knew was right and having him convicted via a fair trial. This article claims that this was a pattern Trump engaged in, using his power to pardon war crimes, and it caused controversy.

This is what I am seeing. To me, it does not look like Donald Trump was a God appointed leader by those standards stated in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2. Using these examples, it looks like he does not honor the claim that everyone is made in God's image and used his power to pardon people who are members of his gang only, regardless of their crime, while displaying a desire to judge and show no mercy for those he did not relate to. I wonder what the Christian leader who first shared these thoughts sees and how, when held up to the Word, we can come to see eye to eye.