Don't get too caught up in the clickbait headline from The Christian Century, even if it does describe its mission as "thoughtful, independent, progressive." The essay turns out to be all of those, but also an actual confession, and a reflection on one of the most unique and uncomfortable aspects of Christianity.
What prompted this declaration? Last week, Donald Trump told Fox & Friends that his focus on peacemaking through strength came from a renewed sense of his mortality and mission, likely inspired by his near-death experience in Butler County, PA. Trump had hinted at the time that the assassination attempt had forced him to reckon with his approach to faith and his place in God's plan. Brandon Ambrosino linked to the New York Times report on Trump's insight into his efforts to end wars, especially in Ukraine:
President Trump dialed into “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning and revealed his newest and truest motivation for brokering an end to the war in Ukraine: He’s worried he might not get into heaven after he dies.
“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he explained. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.” ...
At the White House briefing later on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, was asked if Mr. Trump was joking when he talked about going to heaven, or if “there was a spiritual motivation behind his peace deals.”
“I think the president was serious,” Ms. Leavitt said. “I think the president wants to get to heaven — as I hope we all do in this room as well.”
Fact check: True enough! Our priest made this point at Mass while reflecting on the Gospel reading, in which Jesus warns that the path to salvation is narrow and difficult. He warned that the people we expect to see there may not actually make it, and that the people we expect not to see there may well join us ... assuming we get there at all. He then assured us he'd be there, laughing, but the warning was clear: These are not our judgments to make.
And when one reads past that clickbait headline, it turns out that Ambrosino is making the exact same argument. His "confession" is just that -- an admission that he struggles with usurping God's judgment, and with the teaching to love one's enemies:
But then, as so often happens whenever I’m being too sure of myself, I got the feeling that I was being laughed at by the only person who gets to decide Trump’s eternal fate. And wouldn’t you know it, that person is a master storyteller.
As I gloried in the anticipation of Trump’s eternal demise, I realized that I sounded like a character from one of Jesus’ parables. “Thank you, God, that I’m unlike that corrupt narcissist!” I proudly prayed, echoing the Pharisee who congratulates himself in Luke 18 for not being like a tax collector.
As soon as I made that connection, the parable got to work on me. And it didn’t feel very good.
That’s the point of the parables: to shock us, to wake us up, to force us to question our own moral superiority.
And Ambrosino really gets down to the point in this conclusion:
Maybe the question isn’t whether God wants Trump to go to heaven (God does) or whether I want him to; it is whether Trump himself really wants to go there. The same parables that teach me that God loves the people I hate would, if Trump listened to them, teach him that God is crazy about the people Trump hates. There’s just no way around it. The kingdom of God will be filled with people we are surprised to see. For me, that means folks like Trump; for Trump, that means folks like Biden.
The question each of us needs to ask about our eternal destiny is not whether we are okay sharing eternity with God, but whether we are okay sharing God’s eternity with the people God chooses, without consulting us, to lavish love upon. If we aren’t prepared to spend eternity with our enemies, then maybe we, like Trump, are in danger of not making it there.
This hits directly on the most unique part of the Christian ethos: Love your enemies as yourselves. Jesus explicitly taught that loving one's friends and family hardly qualifies as daunting (although some families may disagree). This explicit call requires one to not just tolerate enemies, but to have an actual caritas, self-sacrificing love for them. Jesus called us to bring good news to all the world and to "make disciples of all nations," no matter how hostile the people might be. Almost all of the original apostles were put to death for their evangelization, most of those far from home.
That caritas love is not conditional, either. Jesus did advise the apostles to shake the dust off their sandals from villages that rejected them, but the mission to bring the Gospel continued nonetheless. Why? It's because we are all God's children, and the Lord wants His family to come to Him of their own free-will choice. If we love our enemies -- and in this context, the word opponent is more appropriate -- then we should hope they come to the Lord, both for their sake and for our sake.
Ambrosino concludes that he should hope to see Trump in heaven. We should hope to see Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden there, for counter-examples. We are called to hope in salvation for all our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and called to faith in Him to judge with justice and mercy those who have been formed for salvation. To presume otherwise is to lack faith and to usurp His authority.
On this, I am happy to see that Ambrosino and I agree, as brothers in Christ. The clickbait headline aside, his essay confesses the same struggle with sin and judgment I experience, a burden most if not all of us suffer in life. If we cannot hope for the salvation of even our worst betes noires, then we have yet to learn how to love as Christ calls us to love.
And finally, perhaps the clickbait headline served a purpose too, as a lesson for online people of faith. The most Christian act we can undertake on social media is probably to click the link before reacting.
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