Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate. A podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey friends. Welcome back to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk, and with me is Dr. Shadi Hamid. Together we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. We’re writing a book together on this topic, and this podcast represents a place where an informal space where we can work out our ideas, talk about these things, and wrestle with what it means to live deep difference. So for those of you who are new to the show, please do subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, please share and like us and give us five stars and A-pluses and all of those things. Feel free to reach out and talk with us on Twitter.
We’re going to share all that information at the end of the podcast. But Shadi, you are working right now on an article that’s reflecting on this past week’s momentous events around Donald Trump and the attack. And we wanted to have some time to process the event itself, but I think more importantly, Donald Trump’s reflections on these things and really America’s reflections on this attack. And I understand you’re working on an article processing those things, and hopefully we can wrestle a bit today talking about that. So why don’t you share a little bit just about the event itself and how you process that? I was actually camping with my kids over the weekend, so I came back and flipped on the news and saw that this had happened. Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
You didn’t know that it had happened until-
Matthew Kaemingk:
No. Yeah, I was in the mountains outside of Seattle. You can see my Seattle artwork here back here. So I was out of cell phone range. I had no idea. And then come back and you send me this story, I’m like “What?” Donald Trump was shot?
Shadi Hamid:
So until you saw my text you didn’t know there was an assassination attempt on the former president?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I had no idea. I was in the bliss of fishing and yeah, out in wilderness.
Shadi Hamid:
Wow.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You were the one who told me.
Shadi Hamid:
Wow. I can’t imagine what that must have been like to come back to that. Wow.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah I mean the image was the red blood on his face and I had no idea what it was or what was going on. So yeah, it was quite a shock to go through my newsfeed and figure out what had happened. Yeah wild.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. So I do have a column coming out on this. By the time you all dear listeners and viewers experience this, it will be out. So we’ll include a link to that column in the Washington Post in the show notes. So feel free to get a bit of read and be interested if folks have any thoughts. It’s going to be controversial perhaps, but I have been thinking a lot about the religious implications of the attempt on Trump’s life and whether a near-death experience can cause a change of heart. And I know this might be a fantasy because Trump is someone who seems so stubbornly resistant to change. Someone who has been who he is for such a long time, how could he really be a different person but not even a different person even something more modest than that, could he have even a modest change of heart and one that we could experience in his political behaviour in the words that he says in the speeches and rallies that we’re going to see in the coming weeks and months.
And if he becomes president, which in my view is increasingly likely, could it lead to a different style of governing? And again that doesn’t mean that he’s not going to have policies that especially Democrats find abhorrent. He’s still going to be a Republican president if he wins. But it’s more about whether or not he can govern in a way that is less authoritarian, less brazenly alienating, in a way that actually treats Democrats and his opponents as Americans and not treating them as enemies to be vanquished. So that’s the fantasy. And I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily think this is likely but I think there is some use in fantasizing about better futures. That we’re so used to being down and depressed about our politics for legitimate reasons especially after Biden’s disastrous debate performance for anyone who was hoping that Biden would win. Obviously that seems less likely now because of that. So I think that there’s a sense especially here in DC, a downcast mood and I want to do something different-
Matthew Kaemingk:
This would be the opposite of catastrophizing in your mind, fantasizing.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah that’s a good way of putting it actually yeah. And look, I think there’s also a personal element here. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of conversion stories. And I’m sure anyone who works on religion is going to find that compelling in some way because that’s what religion is supposed to do. Religion at its best is supposed to take sinners and criminals and people who seem forsaken by God at one moment and then something in them changes. And also there’s a local imam of ours in DC, he was giving a talk just a few weeks back and he was talking about his own conversion story. And there’s this idea of maybe someone experiences the Quran or I think in this particular case a friend had given him a copy of the Quran and then he read a certain chapter of the Quran and something just clicked.
And this idea of a very sudden shift that you might be someone who was just not interested in religion or spirituality at all but somehow something breaks through the resistance and the barriers. And obviously Trump is someone who has considerable resistance and barriers to religion. He’s not a religious person and in fact he’s probably the most secular president in American history somewhat ironically. So anyway, that’s where I’m at on some of this and I can say more about why I’m intrigued by the possibility of him changing. And the cool thing here is that I actually have no idea Matt where you’re at on this. You did say something to me over text before this. You’re like Shadi, I think I disagree with you on this brother. So hey, I’m ready.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah yeah yeah. No, I think we will have some disagreement. Of course you’re hedging yourself as saying maybe I’m fantasizing. But there’s a number of things I want to get to today. Of course I want to talk about has Donald Trump changed? Will Donald Trump change? And then what might a religious conversion look like for him? But I think there’s another thing that I see going on now related to how evangelicals, Christians who love Donald Trump, are theologically processing the assassination and attempt. So they’re starting to say things like God saved him. That God is protecting him. Bannon said he has the armour of God on him. So there’s ways that we theologize political events and we read God’s movements and God’s intentions through these things. Of course the counter side of it is if Donald Trump had been killed would that have been God’s will?
Shadi Hamid:
Well presumably everything that happens is God’s will in some way.
Matthew Kaemingk:
According to some. I mean that’s another thing we can talk about but I also want to get to how people theologically process moments like this and where they say “Oh God clearly wants this or doesn’t want that” and things like that. But yeah no, I’m very sceptical about Donald Trump’s transformation through this event for a wide variety of practical reasons but also Christian theological reasons that we can talk through in terms of how Christians think about how change happens. And I’m interested to hear from you a little bit more on the Muslim side, how does a change of heart happen? Is it primarily through divine action? Does God change us or do we change ourselves? Is it something that’s instant or is it a long process? What sorts of things do you have to do to change?
I mean Christianity has a long history of thinking about those kinds of questions and I’d be really curious if say you were wanting to change spiritually and you went to your Imam, what advice would your Imam give you? I can articulate what that would look like for my pastor. If I go to my pastor and say hey, I’m really struggling with x or y or z and I just can’t seem to change my heart. What do I do that? Christians have a set of things that they would do. And Donald Trump as I’m seeing him start to articulate himself, the sorts of things that he’s saying do not line up with how Christians have historically thought about transformation.
At times he talks about God being involved in the shooting and at other times he just talks about himself that like “Wow look at me. I turned my head. And isn’t that a great coincidence?” And at other points he says “No I shouldn’t be here.” And God’s not a very active agent in his comments but also even his comments about his speech that he’s about to give when is he giving his nomination speech? Is that going to be on Thursday? Yeah. Yeah. We don’t have the speech in hand but he says I had this speech planned for the convention and it was going to be really hard hitting but it was going to be a great speech and we threw it away because it wouldn’t be the right tone to have a hard hitting speech against Biden and all of my enemies. And so he’s like we really need to have this new unity and tone with our country. But then he immediately says but the Democrats might change that and we might be back to fighting real soon. So he’s not signalling an internal transformation.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
In the Christian tradition a transformation begins with an acknowledgement of sin, an acknowledgement that I was on the wrong path. I am a sinner in need of grace. And Donald Trump has said nothing about I am a sinner I need to change my ways. This is unacceptable. I need God, an articulation of my need for God rather than God did this thing for me. And it’s similarly with his followers it is God has given him armour. God has blessed him God has protected him. None of them are saying God needs to change his heart in that a way. Yeah okay. Of course there are other… Let me edit that just a little bit because there are evangelical Republicans who will say I don’t think Donald Trump is a good man. I don’t think he’s a good Christian. Many of them doubt his faith but they’ll say like he’s a necessary evil.
Shadi Hamid:
Or a flawed vessel.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah he’s a flawed vessel or something like that. And I hope that he can change but I’m talking about his ardent followers who go along with Donald Trump’s feeling about God protects Trump God blesses Trump God is with Trump but there’s no language of a need for internal transformation humility confession lament all of those kinds of words are central to the Christian understanding of transformation to have the transformation that you are fantasizing about. As you say you got to name those things and he’s not doing that. And so as a Christian that’s why I’m thinking about that. So anyways I’m not sure where to start. You go ahead.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I have a couple of follow-up questions. I do want to just for listeners and viewers just share a little bit more about what Trump has said.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
So on social media the day after the attempt he said quote “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” That was his first I believe signalling of God’s role in all of this. And in a later conversation with reporters he talked about the chance and really the luck of the moment because if you watch the video of what happened, Trump tilts his head slightly just before shots ring out. So if he hadn’t have done that, the bullet may have very well hit him.
So this is what Trump says as he reflects on this. Quote “If I only half turn, it hits the back of the brain the other way goes right through the skull and because the sign was high I am looking up. The chances of my making a perfect turn are probably one 10th of 1%.” And then his conclusion, he says quote “I’m not supposed to be here.” And we can maybe unpack that too because what does it really mean for someone? Yeah. I’m curious about the theological implications of someone saying I’m not supposed to be here because if you’re here, then again presumably it’s will that you’re here and that you are supposed to be there and so on.
Matthew Kaemingk:
They’re mutually contradictory statements, right? God saved me and I’m not supposed to be here. Those two things can’t both be true.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But also this is not someone who’s very theologically well-read. So look, it’s really slapped. So it’s interesting. I’ll just say one more thing about how he talks about changing his speech at the Republican Convention.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
He emphasizes that this was going to be like a barn burner or I think the word he used was a humdinger of a speech. It was going to be brutal against Democrats. And then he displays this level of self-awareness where he says I’m not going to do that because quote “I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is and how corrupt and crooked even if it’s true.” End quote. And I mean this actually is impressive to me because Trump I think actually has more self-awareness than people give him credit for. He knows how he’s perceived and he knows the performative aspect of what he does and he’s acknowledging that here and saying well actually I’m not going to do that.
So there’s this self-consciousness here that is either encouraging or troubling depending on how you look at it. But I think you’re right Matt that there’s no sense of acknowledgement that he had lost his way, that he had maybe gone too far in the past or that he is really reckoning in a deeper way. Again it’s early days and again this is why I think fantasizing is an interesting exercise because then we can start to imagine maybe not a transformation but something more modest like a change of heart might actually look like and then we can track whether or not he’s moving in that direction and hold him accountable.
So I take your point that the signs that a Christian would look for are not there but we can look at it from a Christian theological perspective or we can look at it just from the secular idea of a near-death experience that when people have a brush with mortality it does focus the mind. It does force them to prioritize some things rather than others. As they think more about death or maybe even who knows the afterlife. Although I don’t think Trump has really given much indication that he believes literally in the prospect of… I don’t know, this is actually something that I’d be interested to look at a little bit more to what extent he’s actually addressed that. But when we do get closer to death and there’s also this idea this trope in literature but also in real life of the deathbed conversion story.
That when you’re really close to death when you know it’s going to happen when you have say a terminal illness or something like that that’s a moment in which people could be like “Hey I got to do this. I got to talk to God more. I got to pray.” Because if there is going to be an afterlife, if there is going to be some reckoning, this is my last shot. So short of a Christian transformation it just might be that something like hey Trump is thinking more about his legacy and he’s thinking about how he might want to redeem his legacy, how he wants to be remembered, that he just doesn’t have much time left because I think there’s always been a sense with Trump of his own… He’s not someone who acts like he has any sense of his own impending death. There’s almost like this sense that he could live forever. The fact that he just eats McDonald’s and burgers.
Matthew Kaemingk:
He eats McDonald’s, he tans himself, he hangs out with young women. Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
He doesn’t seem to exercise at all. There’s no sense of… He plays golf which is not really a real sport. Oops. Okay guys.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Come on man.
Shadi Hamid:
People are getting hit. I don’t know if there’s-
Matthew Kaemingk:
I know podcast listeners who feel strongly about that but yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
I mean the near-death experience I think can be catalytic for change. But I think in terms of how Christians think about how people change, it’s not so much just isolated experiences but it would be a series, a community of practice that is different. And the fact that he jumps right back into the campaign and he’s surrounded by a lot of people who are not let’s just say walking closely with Jesus. He’s involved in the heat of a political campaign and fighting for office and fighting against people that he disagrees with. That kind of environment is not conducive to daily prayer, confession, conversation, being mentored in the faith. And those are all really important aspects of how Christians think change happens. It’s not just an individual moment.
And this might be part of the problem for evangelicalism within the history of the Christian faith because for evangelicals the moment of conversion is a very important thing and the stories that we share about that moment of meeting Jesus is really important. But for the history of the Christian faith it’s not so much that Christians are born at a moment but that they are made over time through study and worship and community and meals and it’s over time that you learn to follow Jesus and you learn to put those things into practice. And so that’s what makes me sceptical that even if he were to have a very close encounter that was disruptive of his sense of I’m infinite, I’m immortal, he’s surrounded by people who are treating him like he’s immortal.
And so it’s hard to think about your own mortality when everyone is treating you like a God or that you have the armour of God or God’s blessing or God’s protection. That doesn’t really prepare you well to be on your knees. We’ve talked about the politics of prayer in the past and the Islamic practice of prayer where you’re on your face and that posture of submission is something Donald Trump would have to assume and the idea of Trump it would be miraculous right? But again the idea of Trump submitting himself to a higher authority I think that’s the really challenging thing. He would have to put something else above him and his own interests. And this is why Trump is politically idolatrous figure because he becomes the focal point of hope and aspiration for many of his followers. And he begins to see himself as a saviour-like figure.
And he memorably said in the 2016 campaign “I alone can fix it.” That’s not the kind of thing that a God conscious person would say. And it just is I think unfortunate that there aren’t people in Trump’s community of followers and supporters. You’d think that there would be evangelical preachers or even theologians because a lot of evangelicals obviously staunchly support Trump that they could be there to help guide him in this moment. But as we’ve talked about in our episode with Russell Moore the evangelical supporters of Trump are thinking primarily about politics and not theology and they’re thinking primarily about winning and not necessarily about the place of Christ in this political universe. So that just seems like a missed opportunity. I wish that there were better people around him even just a sprinkling of them.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Okay. So there’s one other term or element I want to introduce in here because I think it’s really important to this will be helpful to understand how Donald Trump is articulating himself and then how American Christians are processing this. It’s a term from a sociologist Christian Smith who introduced this term of what he called moral therapeutic deism and he argued that this is a dominant faith within America that you might say it’s parasitic off of Christianity. It smells a little bit like Christianity but it’s not. So the term once again moral therapeutic deism and it has three tenets that go along with it. The moral is you need to be a good person, try to be a good person. The therapeutic is the importance of feeling whole and feeling happy and living a fulfilled life. So be a good person, be emotionally healthy. And then deism is there is a God, he’s distant.
He wants you to be good and he wants you to be happy and he helps you in times of emergency. So he’s a little bit like a 911 Santa Claus if you will. So when you’re in trouble and if you ask nicely he will help you. So you want to live a good life you want to live a happy life you want to be true to yourself. That’s what God wants for you and God will help you. So the way that this differs from Christianity and there’s many ways that it differs from Christianity is one is moral therapeutic deism does not seek a deep heart transformation. There’s no sense of confession. Moreover, there’s no cross where Jesus dies for your sins and you live in and for Jesus. In moral therapeutic deism, God is a distant helper.
And so we see that in how Donald Trump talks about these things right? That God protected him in this emergency moment. Similarly, for a lot of American Christians talking about it that they speak about God as a protector but not as someone who might completely transform Donald Trump’s life or his heart. And so that’s the difference between a moral therapeutic deism and a Christian understanding. So coming out of this experience being a moral therapeutic what Donald Trump would say “I want to try and be more moral. I want to try and be more truly myself.” So it’s more a sense of self-actualization. I want to be my best self which that’s very different from the Christian call right? Christians are not-
Shadi Hamid:
But that’s still better than the alternative. I get that this is not the Christian-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes it is.
Shadi Hamid:
… ideal but that would be amazing. If he was like “I want to be my best self.” It sounds like trite and corny and I can’t imagine him actually saying it but we’d be like “Oh my God did Trump actually say that?” That’s amazing.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay, you are absolutely right. No, it would be much better to live in a world of moral therapeutic deists than to live in a world of narcissistic megalomaniacs yes.
Shadi Hamid:
But I guess you could also make the argument that maybe moral therapeutic deism it aspires to being better and it sounds like it might lead to that but if it doesn’t have the strong Christian or even Muslim or Jewish foundations, it’s not based on something theologically grounded that the fruit that comes out of it will be not necessarily rotten but not quite right either.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay so I take your point. I think that’s absolutely right. We should be grateful and happy if Donald Trump were to say I want to be a better person. I want to be more moral. I want to be my best self or live my best life or whatever.
Shadi Hamid:
Live my truth.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah live my truth, live, laugh, love. That would be preferable. That said okay now I’m going to push again. What’s politically dangerous about a particular version of moral therapeutic deism is when you say God is with me. So when you start saying this is God’s man he is God’s marked man. He’s the man of manifest destiny. Is it Ross who just wrote about Trump as a man of destiny that in the times when you start to say God is sorry Donald Trump is a man of destiny man he’s protected by God then it’s impossible to criticise, it’s impossible to check all of these sorts of things. And that’s the real danger of this moral therapeutic deism is that it’s not just I’m trying to be a good man but God is making me a good man.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But is there something different between being a man of destiny and being God’s man? I haven’t read the piece that you’re referencing but what does it even mean to be a man of destiny? I guess that’s itself a mystery. I am reminded of the Quranic verse no one knows the soldiers of God but God which is an admonition to be modest about our claims that human beings are raised or protected by God or we can be sure that that’s the case the only one who can truly judge that is God himself.
And for us to assume that on behalf of God is itself a potentially dangerous move because once you start saying that certain individuals are channelling God through them or have God’s armour then of course we know what can result that almost anything can be justified. I think we always have to be careful because our judgement is often weak. We are mere mortals and it’s just a big claim to make. Yeah. So I mean all those things that you mentioned I hadn’t heard about the Steve Bannon comment about God’s armour although that’s precisely the thing you would expect him to say but it’s scary.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I want to put back on I said I wanted to hear more about the Islamic understanding of transformation. So I don’t know exactly how to intro this but if you were to go to your Imam and say my heart is a mess. I want the wrong things I desire the wrong things. What sorts of advice might you get from Muslim mentors or the Quran or the Hadith about the change of the heart? How might a heart change, is that effort? Is that reading? Is that prayer? What would the ingredients be in an Islamic transformative process?
Shadi Hamid:
Well look, the first thing I’ll say is I’m very much intrigued by this question of how change occurs within individuals. In part because I’ve tried to become more religious and more serious about my practice in recent years. And so I’ve had to contend with this in my own life of how is progress made, what does progress look like? There’s also the more I think maybe different question about what does it really mean to be more practising? Obviously there are the required rituals in Islam that go without saying but obviously that’s just a minimum floor. And to be spiritual means to go beyond just ritual because there’s obviously people who do ritual but then it’s not reflected in their behaviour and it doesn’t seem to actually make inroads into their own hearts. So there’s one thing that I just heard from actually the Imam that I mentioned earlier that he said that stood out to me recently.
I think this is from a Hadith that it’s something to the effect that imagine a mother and a child and the mother is obviously merciful and forgiving towards her child even if her child does bad things and isn’t ideal. We’re all flawed, all of that. But a mother has a certain protective nature where she’s going to give a lot of grace for her child and love her child even if her child does things that she doesn’t like then. So I think the Hadith is along the lines of well imagine that God is multiple times, I forget what the exact number is or if it’s even that, but God is so much more merciful to his creation than a mother is to her child. So take that and multiply it exponentially and it’s a limitless multiplication because God is infinite so his mercy has no limits.
And when we start each verse of each chapter of the Quran with in the name of God the most merciful when we say God is the most merciful we’re trying to give an approximation to something that is very hard to approximate. What does it mean to be the most merciful? What does it mean to have limitless mercy? And this is something that I think has been really important for me because sometimes we grow up with the idea that God we hear about God’s punishment so much. And obviously this was also a topic of a previous episode on the role of Hell which I would strongly recommend people go back to if you’re interested in this side of it. But I heard a lot about hell. And when you hear about God’s punishment yes that’s important. Yes that has to play a role in theology and our understanding of salvation. But when we’re conditioned to thinking about God’s punishment then there’s a risk that we start to lose faith in the possibility of mercy and forgiveness.
So this Hadith I think is really important in capturing us that no matter how bad you’ve been, no matter how far away from the straight path you’ve found yourself, there is no limit. So there’s never a point where you’ve lost the possibility of God’s mercy. And I think that people who are stuck in a cycle of sin sometimes they can just be like I’m hopeless. I have no way out. God will never look kindly upon me again. I’ve lost him. He’s out of my life. And then there’s also this sense in Islam that the devil comes and tells us that it’s the devil. An interesting and maybe even counterintuitive way is trying to convince us that we have no path for forgiveness. So it’s not God who’s telling us this punishing, the self-punishing aspect is actually not coming from God. It’s coming from the devil. The devil wants us to lose hope and he wants us to stay on not the crooked path as long as we can.
So I think the first step is having hope and this I think applies to Trump in a very useful way. It applies to people criminals or people who we think are just really beyond God’s grace. And we also have any number of stories in the founding of Islam where obviously no one is Muslim in the beginning. People have to convert. And so in Mecca the prophet and the early converts they give a lot of grace to Meccans who at least in the beginning are opponents of Islam and they’re fighting Islam. And then we have because obviously those are the pool of converts. So if you’re saying that if everyone who opposes us is beyond redemption then you’re going to have no one who’s able to join your faith. So by definition if a young religion wants to grow and expand it has to have a posture of openness and forgiveness towards its enemies. There’s no other way.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So I mean I think there are very important political aspects to this. If you believe in divine mercy and the power of God to change people I mean the one that clearly comes to mind and is used quite often is in terms of capital punishment. Should the state kill people and who are against capital punishment will often talk about how God can save anyone. No one is beyond God’s mercy. The game is not over until the moment of death. And so that particular doctrine is used in Christian legal arguments about the death penalty. Similarly, you and I talk a lot about the fate of democracy in the United States and the ways in which we talk about people as beyond the pale and really beyond salvation. So as American politics are becoming more and more apocalyptic or this tribal politics, a clash between pure good and pure evil you imagine your opponents that the Democrats or the Republicans as being beyond salvation beyond transformation.
And there’s something really dangerous if you give up that hope of persuasion of conversion of whatever it is. Because if these people are beyond persuasion if they’re beyond persuasion then the only way that I quote-unquote “Solve them” is I kill them. And so in this moment of political violence yeah without that level of hope I think democracy requires a hope of change. Even if you’re wrong about your faith or their faith or whatever else democracy requires citizens who have some hope and persuasion. Because if there is no hope for persuasion then all you have is raw power.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
All that’s left is coercion. And all of this starts if we go all the way back is the mother and her child being merciful as an understanding of divine mercy that divine mercy, a belief in divine mercy is a resource for democratic life. Because if God can change Donald Trump then I can keep debating with him. But if God can’t change Donald Trump then there’s nothing left but just to defeat or kill right?
Shadi Hamid:
Yes. That’s really important. The point about death row conversions it’s really important but it also reminds me of Hadith. It’s similar where there’s a murderer and he’s killed 99 people but he feels bad and he’s wondering if he can repent. So he’s on this journey presumably somewhere in the desert and he’s walking towards a village where there’s going to be a monk or a religious type figure where he can explore this. And basically what ends up happening is that he himself dies halfway on the way to this village. So the angels and the devil, the angels and the demons. Oh yeah yeah. Yeah the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment to simplify, they’re quarrelling amongst themselves about who takes him basically and he’s in the midway point on the way to the village.
So then God steps in and actually moves the point so that he’s actually passed halfway to the village. And this is the idea that God can step in even if there’s these kinds of borderline cases. And even someone who has had this very long history of killing a lot of people once they Implant this desire for change and this maybe gets back to some the earlier points about there has to be an openness in your heart. You have to actually make the first step so you move towards God and then God will move mountains towards you. So there is a sense of that first step. And it can be a very modest one because this guy hasn’t really done much good. All he’s done is he’s moving towards the possibility of good but even that allows him a possibility of redemption. And again these things aren’t necessarily meant to be taken 100% literally but they are I think meant to be messages to us to give us hope.
Again this idea that we’re not forsaken by God that we are not condemned and we shouldn’t condemn ourselves. And that is I think really at the heart of some of the Catholic arguments against a death penalty which we did talk about also in a previous episode in a previous season with Elizabeth Bruenig. But I think this is what’s missing with Donald Trump to bring it back to that. And I think this is your objection earlier on in this conversation Matt that there’s no sign that he’s really decided to move towards God. He hasn’t necessarily taken that step again but we don’t really know what is in the hearts of men and God works in mysterious ways and all of that.
Well this raises a question I think that let’s say Trump… That I’ll put to you Matt. Let’s say Trump isn’t going to go through a transformation of the Christian sort that you talked about. Let’s say he is just that a flawed vessel but a flawed vessel can still be part of God’s plan. And can you say a little bit more about the flawed vessel argument? Because I think that’s one that we hear a lot but I’m not totally sure how it works.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sure yeah. I think the basic understanding is if you look through the Bible the people of Israel encounter lots of pagan nations and pagan kings and there’s an articulation of God moving through history and actually moving through pagan powers to fulfil God’s purposes. And so God can use anyone he wants to pursue his purposes. And so within the context of Donald Trump and American Christianity you do have the Christians who just think Donald Trump is wonderful and he’s amazing and he’s God’s man. But then you have other evangelicals think no Donald Trump is very flawed he’s very fallen. He doesn’t smell like Jesus in any way, shape or form but God is somehow using him to do things like Supreme Court justices and things like that. And so he’s a flawed vessel that God is using.
But both of these are a type of what’s called natural theology which is that you read God into events through the world. So you believe that you can name God’s actions and God’s will. So with great confidence you say this is clearly God’s vessel. And like I said at the very beginning of our discussion what if Donald Trump had died? Does that mean that he wasn’t God’s man? So reading history is very tricky in those kinds of ways but that’s the basic thing of the flawed vessel theology.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay okay. Yeah. It’s also worth noting that God’s people suffer or have been killed quote-unquote “Before their time.” And that itself is an interesting way that people put it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right. So when Donald Trump was convicted, when he became a convicted felon then they would say well Jesus was a convicted felon. So Donald Trump is like Jesus.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh interesting.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So no matter what happens to Donald Trump-
Shadi Hamid:
It’s falsifiable.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So if he were killed then they would say-
Shadi Hamid:
He was a martyr for God.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Donald Trump is a martyr for God and if he saved it’s God saved him.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So that’s the trick with natural theology is that it becomes an internal system and the Bible can’t penetrate it just because you are reading God out of history rather than reading God out of scripture. And so you develop a political theology that is impenetrable and that’s extremely dangerous. And so with moral therapeutic deism there’s no scripture that can penetrate it. It is just be a good person in the way that you think being good is, live a happy whole life in however you define that and then pray to this God who might help you in emergencies. There’s no outside scripture that can convict or transform you.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And maybe I think just thinking about it from a Muslim perspective I think the other thing that I would add about how we save our own hearts or how to open up our hearts I mean the role of ritual is important. Maybe this is one contrast with Christianity but I’d be curious what your thoughts are on this that at some level you have to obviously there are rituals that Christians can do but I think that there’s much more of a focus in Islam that to open up your heart it’s hard to do that if you’re not upholding the five daily prayers. If you’re not upholding the law then that will create a barrier between you and God and it will darken your heart.
So the first step if you want to have your heart open to the possibilities of something more, the first thing that you can do before anything else is you just do things. You just do the work so to speak that there is no substitute for doing the work. At some point you just got to do stuff. And that can require a lot of willpower. And at some point and in some ways that’s I think encouraging and refreshing because it does put a lot of agency onto the individual that anyone can wake up.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Okay. So Shadi our Christian listeners right now are just like the hairs on the back of their necks is going up.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh God what did I do?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh oh it’s just fine. You’re doing fine man. You’re doing fine. But for Christians you said to save your own heart or to open up your own heart. These are things that Christians would not say we can do.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay so the word save I guess is a trigger maybe that.
Matthew Kaemingk:
No. And earlier when you told that Hadith you said we need to make the first move and then God will respond to us. Whereas for the Christian faith it’s flipped. It’s actually God makes the first move. So Augustine he would say I don’t want to do the good but I want to want to do the good. That makes sense. He knows within his own heart he wants to steal he wants to sleep around he wants to be selfish. He says I know my heart is messed up.
Shadi Hamid:
And he has that famous quote too “Oh God make me chaste but not yet.”
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes exactly. So that’s it right? So I don’t want to be chaste but I want to want to be chaste.
Shadi Hamid:
Ah yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. Okay. So then he says I believe that that desire pleases you but ultimately for Augustine and for other Christians we would say our heart is so mixed up in sin we can’t want God in the pure way that we need to want and worship him because we’re always going to make it selfish. We’re always going to make it about ourselves. And so transformation in Christianity is less taking a step in the right direction and it’s more like giving up. So you’ve been writing a lot about giving up recently. I mean becoming a Christian is more like quitting. It’s more like saying I can’t do this. God I need you to come to me because I can’t get to you. I can’t get there. I can’t even make the step. And so transformation is understood as it begins with God rescuing us and us responding to that rescue.
Shadi Hamid:
But what if God doesn’t come and rescue you after you’ve given up? That just seems how does that work exactly? So let’s say someone is just like “Oh boy I give up.” And what if they don’t feel God’s presence? What if? Help me understand that a bit more.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So that’s a wonderful question. This will probably need to be an extra podcast but I think that what I would say to that person is what we know from scripture and history is much like the story you told. God is like a mother who loves her child and would do anything and has done everything for us. And so if you have given up and you don’t feel that presence just know that, know and be a part of a community that knows that God does rescue and God is faithful and God is more faithful than we are. And that’s where being a part of a community faith is really helpful. Because if you’re all alone it’s very difficult to know and feel that presence. But we understand that we know and experience God in community.
Shadi Hamid:
And another question on that. So how does one give up? Because you could also see that in itself as a step. It is something that requires a conscious choice on the part of the individual. They must decide to give up. There still is a sense of agency is there not?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh this is so fun man. I love this podcast. This is so great. I’m so happy. So I think that for Christians you keep using this word individual.
Shadi Hamid:
Maybe that’s the effect of liberalism on me.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So for Christians the line between individual human beings and God is a porous one. And so even in giving up we would understand that God is active in our life helping us give up. That there’s never a moment where we are alone as an individual. There’s never a moment where we make a decision completely by ourselves. God is always active in our lives. And you might not know that in the moment. I don’t mean to make an evangelical call to our listeners but if you find yourself kneeling late at night before God and asking God for help you might not recognise it in the moment but days later you will recognise that God was actually moving in your heart helping you to give up.
You probably thought you made that decision all by yourself that you took that step towards God in the moment. But later on you’ll recognise that all along God was helping you give up. God was helping you take that first step. And so part of living a godly life is recognising that God has been with you since you were born. And so God brings you to this point. It’s not that you this autonomous individual gather all the facts reason it out and decide yes clearly there is a God and I need to do these five things. And God is sitting there waiting for you. God’s always pursuing and you’re porous. So God invades you.
Shadi Hamid:
But if God is acting in all these ways and the line is porous, why isn’t that having an effect on Trump? What is the explanation for people who seem immune to God’s power in this or that’s probably not a good way of putting it but they seem like they aren’t being affected by God’s interaction across the porous line. How do we explain that with someone like Trump or people who just never change?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So like basic theodicy like why doesn’t God save everyone? Why doesn’t God-
Shadi Hamid:
Not even saving them but just-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Or change everyone. I don’t have an answer.
Shadi Hamid:
So how do we explain who is being changed by God and who isn’t?
Matthew Kaemingk:
We don’t explain that. That would be an improper thing to explain.
Shadi Hamid:
No no. But how do we make sense of it theologically?
Matthew Kaemingk:
This is a time of this is God’s patience with the evil of the world and God is being patient with humanity right now. And that’s beyond my understanding. And that’s part of why Christians will use a word called Maranatha which means come Jesus come quickly. Because sometimes we get really frustrated with God’s patience. We want Jesus to come back and the debate and the suffering and end the injustice and make every knee bow. We want every knee to go down because we think that would lead to flourishing. But we live in a time of God’s patience. And God is deciding not to do that with Donald Trump and with many others.
Shadi Hamid:
Well we don’t know yet. Let’s hope. There still is hope I think.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah that’s right.
Shadi Hamid:
If we want to end on a slightly positive note here we don’t know what is yet to come and hope springs eternal.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. And so I wanted to close with this. It’s one of my favourite little lines from GK Chesterton on optimism and pessimism and I think it captures I’m excited for your article to come out Shadi in the Post about your fantasizing about Donald Trump’s as you would say fantasizing about his transformation. As a corrective to the catastrophizing that we’ve talked about everything is terrible. We’re going to be destroyed. This is the end of democracy. This is the last election all these sorts of things. So GK Chesterton is a Christian journalist editorialist. You would just love his writing.
Shadi Hamid:
He’s very quotable. He has great quotes and quips.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah yeah. So he’s got one quote that I thought of as well that is very relevant to our time. He says the quote is oh he says… Okay here it is. “A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.” So yeah basically old men who fight a lot rarely change their mind. Obviously very relevant to the Donald Trump situation. He’s not a military man. He famously did not go to Vietnam. But he is someone who’s in the fight in a daily basis. And it’s actually it is it’s very difficult to change yourself when you’re in a fighting position when this is your posture. It’s hard for you. For those of you who are not watching on YouTube I’m making fists right? So when you’re making fists getting ready to fight it’s hard to have a posture of reception with open hands. And so Chesterton famously said “Old military men don’t change their minds.”
Shadi Hamid:
So maybe then it’s an exhortation to all of us and to all of you who are listening just stop fighting for a moment or for more moments. I mean Donald Trump won’t be able to do that unfortunately. So that makes me less hopeful. But all of us do have the ability to not always be in political battle and to make choices to remove ourselves from the political battles that seem to be consuming American public life. And that is a conscious decision that each of us can make. We do have agency in that regard. No one requires-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Here’s the-
Shadi Hamid:
… you to be political all the time.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Indeed. But here’s the Chesterton quote about optimism and pessimism.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh okay. There’s still more.
Matthew Kaemingk:
There’s still more Chesterton goodness. So what Chesterton is battling back against in this section he’s saying we shouldn’t be moderates. We shouldn’t just be a little bit optimistic and a little bit pessimistic. He’s talking to Christians here. He’s actually arguing that Christians should be both deeply pessimistic and deeply optimistic. And he says so here’s the quote. “No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world but we demand not strength enough to get on with it but strength enough to get it on. Can a man hate the world enough to change it and yet love the world enough to think it worth changing? Can you look up at the colossal good of the world without at once feeling acquiescence? And can you look up at the world’s colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can you in short be at once? Not only a pessimist and an optimist but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Can you be enough of a pagan to die for the world? That means a pagan in the sense of you really love the world.
Can you love the world enough to die for it? And can you be a Christian enough to die to the world?” So to say it’s not the whole thing. That’s the pinch for the Christian faith or just for citizenship I would say is can you love democracy and democratic politics enough to really engage with it but not love it so much that you become obsessed with democratic politics in the way that you talk about Shadi? It says it’s in this combination. I maintain that it’s the rational optimist who fails and the irrational optimist who succeeds. He’s ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself. So you’re willing to smash America for its own sake. You love America so much that you would destroy it. So you need to be able to have a deep optimism and a deep pessimism together.
The other part of the quote is you have to feel like the world is an ogre’s castle that you need to charge but also your home like a cosy cottage. So you need to have both of those things at once. And we can see in American politics honestly the mistakes of citizens who see American politics as a castle that they have to charge quite literally on January 6th. I have to charge, I have to smash America to save it or this acquiescence of it’s just my home that I love. So yeah I look forward to your column Shadi and maybe we can share the link to it when it comes out. But yeah to continue to think about as citizens how can we be hopeful for the transformation of our enemies and the change of our enemies? And how can we be reflective on our own fallenness our own finitude so that we might be the kinds of citizens frankly that we need?
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. Well that’s a great note to end on a very positive one. Well kind of positive I guess.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Both.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah both. So thanks to all of you. I mean before I just say thanks to our listeners I just want to say I loved this episode and granted I like or love all of our episodes like children I suppose like the hypothetical children that I don’t have. But this one okay I feel rejuvenated. This is good. So thanks to Matt. Thanks to all of you for listening to Zealots at the Gate. If you like what you heard you’d always check out our other episodes and check out our host Comment magazine at comment.org. And we do want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter at Shadi Hamid. That’s my handle. And Matthew Kaemingk. And note the Dutch spelling there at the end or you can use the hashtag #zealotspod. Lastly you can feel free to send us an email at zealots@comment.org and we do look at those and we always love to hear from you.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Our thanks to our sponsor Fuller Seminary Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment magazine produced by Allie Crummy. Audience strategy by Matt Crummy and editorial direction by Ms. Anne Snyder. Until next time friends I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Thanks for joining us. See you.
