2 Chronicles 7 Is a Blueprint for Tyranny
The Christian theology represented by the biblical text of 2 Chronicles Chapter 7 is a cult of narcissism.
Donald Trump is about to read this psalm of religious despotism to the nation as part of the America Reads the Bible Initiative.
Full Transcript of this Episode:
Donald Trump has announced that he is going to be participating as the president of the United States, in the name of the U.S. Federal government, in something called the America Reads the Bible Initiative. The America reads the Bible initiative is a partnership of private groups with government organizations. It is a theocratic project.
When I say it’s theocratic, what I mean by that is that it is intended to strengthen the grip of Christianity on government power, to replace American democracy with religious government, in which Christian leaders, not the American people, are in control.
Here is what Donald Trump has said about his participation in this project, which begins tonight with his reading of 2 Chronicles, chapter 7, from the Bible:
“From Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World and the first permanent English-speaking settlement at Jamestown to our founding in 1776 and to the present day, the Bible has been indelibly woven into our national identity and way of life. Nearly 400 years ago, a decade after the arrival of the Mayflower, the legendary John Winthrop powerfully invoked Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop said, imploring his fellow Christian settlers to stand as a beacon of faith for all the world to see… the Bible has enduringly illuminated our system of Government, given life to our constitutional framework, bolstered our educational institutions, and informed our deepest civic and moral identity… In every generation, through every trial and triumph, God’s Word has guided our people and our country to incredible new heights.
Today, during our 250th year of American independence, the America Reads the Bible initiative invites all citizens to once again acknowledge our Nation’s extraordinary Biblical foundations and to give thanks for the countless ways in which God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength. This one-week event, during which leaders in faith, Government, business, and entertainment will read every verse and chapter of the Bible, will inspire countless citizens to rediscover the Biblical truths that have animated our Republic for two and a half centuries and to pray that the Bible will continue to guide us—as individuals, as a people, and as a Nation—for the next 250 years and beyond.
I applaud every citizen participating in the America Reads the Bible initiative. Together, we will honor Holy Scripture, renew our faith, usher in a historic resurgence of religion on American shores, and rededicate the United States as one Nation under God.”
When Trump talks about the rededication of the United States as One Nation Under God, what he's talking about is an upcoming event on May 17th, a national prayer rally, a Christian only rally. No other religions but Christianity are participating. At this rally, Donald Trump will declare that the United States is a Christian nation, a nation for Christians, not for other people.
That statement represents the contradiction between what Trump claims is the role of Christianity in American history and what it actually is.
He says, “God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength,” but that's just not true. Actually, Christianity has been a source of division in the United States of America. Really, that's what the Christian prophet Jesus would have wanted. In the Bible, in the gospels, Jesus says he didn't come to bring peace. He came to divide people from each other, to rip families apart, to cause disunity, and boy, Christianity is doing that for sure. 40% of Americans are not Christians, but Donald Trump is set on declaring that, for those of us who are not Christian, we're not going to be Americans anymore, and we will be faced with the choice of either accepting Christianity or giving up our place in this country.
That kind of religious divisiveness is what that city on a hill that John Winthrop promised was really all about. After John Winthrop invoked the gospel of Matthew, talking about the city on the hill, he set up a tyrannical theocratic Christian government that tortured and executed people for failing to follow the kind of Christianity that John Winthrop thought they ought to engage in. John Winthrop and his successors established Christian rituals of humiliation, putting people in the stocks, beating people, killing people, simply because they would not accept the authority of the Christian church.
We all know about the Salem witch trials. That's the legacy of John Winthrop, and his intolerant Puritan Christianity.
That colonial period of religious cruelty is specifically what Donald Trump is citing as an example of what he wants the United States of America to become again, and that is reinforced, unfortunately, by Donald Trump's choice of a specific passage from the Bible that he has chosen to read.
He has chosen to read the 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7. He's not going to read the whole thing. So, I want to give you a bit of a larger passage from that chapter. So that you can understand what it is that that passage is really up to, to help you see why Donald Trump is choosing to read that instead of any other passage from the Bible.
Donald Trump is going to read this in an official federal government event tonight.
2 Chronicles 7 is a part of the Bible in which you have King Solomon. It's part of the Old Testament, and the God of the Bible is talking to King Solomon.
“The Lord appeared to him at night and said:
I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people,if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.
“As for you, if you walk before me faithfully as David your father did, and do all I command, and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father when I said, ‘You shall never fail to have a successor to rule over Israel.’
“But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them,then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the Lord, the god of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them, that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”
This ideology is what Donald Trump says is the foundation of our nation. In this passage, you have the God of the Bible talking like Donald Trump talks.
You know, another thing that's happening today is that the ceasefire between the United States and Iran is going to be over, and maybe they'll come up with a deal at the last minute. Maybe the bombs will start falling again. Maybe Donald Trump will start killing people again because they are not doing what he says.
They're not giving him what he wants and that's what happens when you don't give Donald Trump what he wants: He kills people. He destroys things.
That's exactly what the god of the Bible is doing in the 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7, which Donald Trump says is the guiding light of our country. I think you can see why Donald Trump has chosen this passage.
This passage from the Bible, 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7 provides religious justification for totalitarian government.
In this part of the Bible, the god of the Bible is declaring that he will support a royal throne. He will give that, not as a promise to the people, of the nation, but to the leader of that nation, saying, “you will never fail to have a successor. I will establish your royal throne,” and he's talking to an individual there. He is saying, I'm going to give you, as an individual, the undisputed power to command all of the people in this nation.
The deal is that you have to obey his religion. You have to do what this God commands.
Why would they do what this God commands? They have to obey, because they have been attacked by this God. They have been abused by this God, terrorized by this God. Right here in this passage of the Bible, it says so.
It says that this god who has all of the power, closed up the heavens, so that there was no rain, so there was a drought. People didn't have water to drink. People couldn't grow crops. They were starving. Then, this god sent locusts to devour the food that they already had. Then, this god sent a disease, a deadly disease, to kill people.
That's what this god is like. He starts out by punishing you, and then says, you want this to stop, you have to agree, not just to worship me, but also to follow this guy, King Solomon, who I am declaring is going to be your absolute ruler. If you do that, I'll stop killing you. I'll stop abusing you. I'll stop destroying your property, ruining your lives.
Then he says at the end, just keep in mind, King Solomon, if you ever disobey me, I will bring disaster on you again.
This is not a loving God, this is not a God who wants just to have good things for everybody who's just trying to get along, this is a commanding, absolute tyrant, a dictator, an absolute dictator, who wants to have power for the sake of power.
Of course, we know that this God doesn't exist at all. This God never actually shows up. It's an invisible character.
It's a mythology. However, as an ideology, this Bible has a negative impact that is quite tangible in our country.
Our president of the United States, who is mentally unwell, a sadist who seems to enjoy inflicting cruelty for the sake of his own sense of power, is invoking the idea of this part of the Christian Bible, in which you have the God of the Bible, declaring that he will install a dictator, a tyrant.
In this part of the Bible, the text refutes the idea that there can be any freedom for people to rule themselves. The text of the Bible refutes the idea that people can choose their own religion.
This is another thing that's really striking in what Donald Trump is choosing to say here. In this passage from the second book of Chronicles, the god of the Bible specifically says that you must not ever go and participate in any other religion, you may not entertain even the idea of any other gods, or else I will torture you, I will kill you, I will destroy your society.
Some people may say, well, this is just the Old Testament, so it doesn’t count. That’s balderdash.
This is a biblical passage that Donald Trump has chosen to represent his agenda as a Christian politician. Besides, Christians are often quite happy to impose Old Testament rules when it suits them - when it justifies their appetite for oppression.
More importantly than that, and if you've been listening to this podcast, you know what I'm about to say: This violent totalitarianism is not just an idea that appears in the Old Testament. It's in the New Testament as well. In fact, it's where the Bible ends up.
The end of the entire biblical story is in the book of Revelation, where Jesus appears. In Revelation, Jesus talks to somebody named John of Patmos, and he says to John: I'm going to torture everybody who refuses to obey me. I'm going to torture everybody who does not worship me as a god king, because I'm coming back and I'm going to establish an earthly kingdom.
I'm going to smash all the nations that refuse to obey me. I'm going to kill them, but first I'm going to inflict a terrible torture upon them that lasts 5 months.
Yes, this is Jesus in the Bible. That is Christian canon, for practically any Christian church that you might hear about, the book of Revelation is canon. Right at the beginning of the book of Revelation, it says, this book is “the testimony of Jesus”. These are the words of Jesus.
So if you want to talk about the teachings of Jesus, that's what this is about, and it's right in line with the 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7 that Donald Trump is going to read tonight. It's saying that the main thing you need to do as a Christian is not to be good to other people, it's not to be kind. It is to obey.
If you don't obey, God is going to come and torture you, and kill you, and your job as a Christian is to watch, as that God, as Jesus, comes back and tortures and kills people for disobeying Christianity. Furthermore, the message is that you should do nothing to stop it.
That's not compassion. That's not love. That's not turning the other cheek.
You know, I don't think Jesus is ever coming back. I don't believe in undead rulers from 2000 years ago, but that's not the problem. The problem is that we have the president of the United States, who is claiming that power for himself, and we have seen enough from Donald Trump to know that he is quite willing to make these terrible threats come true.
When Donald Trump talks about the United States being one nation under God, that's what he's talking about. He's talking about one nation under him.
You are going to hear a lot of people say something else. You're going to hear them say that the 2nd book of Chronicles chapter 7 is all about people being humble and atoning for their sins, as the text puts it, for their wicked ways.
I want you to think about this: When does the god of the Bible ever atone for his wicked ways, for abusing people, for torturing them, for killing them, simply because they will not worship him?
God is a spiritual narcissist, and Donald Trump is taking his inspiration from that.
You're also going to hear a lot of people say that Donald Trump is not a real Christian. They say Trump is a fake Christian, but that's not true.
He attended a Christian church weekly as a child. He went to at least a couple of other Christian churches through his young adult in middle adulthood. He was married 3 times in 3 different churches by 3 different Christian preachers. He's always talking about Christianity and wanting to make the United States one nation under God, a Christian God.
The thing some people presume about Christianity is that it is a religion of compassion, and so that therefore, anything that is not compassionate cannot be Christian, and therefore, Donald Trump is not a Christian.
But this Bible verse shows that is not the case.
The 2nd book of Chronicles, chapter 7 is frankly sadistic.
What it sets up is a moral universe in which the powerless always have to grovel before the powerful to apologize and to beg for forgiveness from the great leader for failing to worship him as much as he deserves.
That's the vision of religious morality, that the Bible sets up in the verse that Donald Trump is reading tonight. It ought to terrify you, that he wants to impose this upon you, as one nation under God.
Here in the United States of America, we have had a constitution that is supposed to protect us, that says there is no religious test for public office, and the 1st amendment, the very 1st amendment to our Constitution says there is going to be no establishment of religion by the government.
We can't have any laws doing that. Donald Trump wants to take that apart because he wants to be worshipped.
The foundation of our country is the separation of church and state. Separation of church and state is a promise that has never been fulfilled, but it has never been more clear that that is what we need.