Is Trump a Biblical Allegory?

Money, status, power, influence and fame neither produces nor guarantees happiness or a good life.

The bible is filled with stories of beings sent from God to teach the people a lesson. From countless prophets warning everyone to be better to brutal plagues ranging from Noah’s flood to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the story of Moses, one way or another, God is trying to tell us something. While many of us now see these lessons as outdated, in many ways, Trump really does seem like the perfect biblical allegory.

What are the lessons God may be trying to convey? First, it’s the same lesson as Jesus teaches over and over in the New Testament: money, status, power, influence and fame neither produces nor guarantees happiness or a good life. Trump has had the most powerful job in the world. He has a lot of money (whether hundreds of millions or billions, it’s still a lot). He has tens of millions of followers, if not more. He is one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. He lives in total luxury with carrera marble and fine corinthian leather and gold plating everywhere he turns. And Trump is utterly miserable. He is always aggrieved, always hurt, always slighted. He is always at conflict, never at peace. He pursued money, status, glamor and power at all costs, achieved it in full, and it turned out to not produce anywhere near the desired result of a happy life.

It goes on. Trump schemed his way to the top. And what does it lead to? More scheming. Now he’s scheming how to post the $175 million bond to the State of New York. How to avoid going to trial for treason, for election rigging, for espionage. How to beat the charges in the Stormy Daniels case. How to avoid prison. How to avoid bankruptcy. How to avoid being held accountable for all of the actions that got him the power and money and influence and status he wanted in the first place. Scheming only begets more scheming, which begets more scheming. It’s not a solution.

And the Trump allegory teaches us about the sins of his enemies too. Trump has been a successful demagogue in large part because the people he appeals to feel mistreated. They feel condescended to, looked down upon. The birth of cable news and then social media created an efficient forum for someone like Trump to capitalize on that anger. 

So much of that frustration comes directly from the attitudes of those who see themselves as elite — people who are typically highly educated, affluent, generally non-religious, live in big cities, vote for Democrats, and are quick to look down on anyone different from them — and even quicker to lecture to anyone in earshot about their moral inferiority. 

People do not like being told that they’re lesser. They do not like being told how to think. They do not like being condescended or lectured to. The attitude of the resistance is what helped make Trump possible in the first place. Constantly looking down on your fellow human beings as inferior is no better than striving desperately for money, status and power for the sake of nothing but money, status and power. They’re all signs of societal decay. Be forewarned — or maybe the behavior of both Trump and his foes is the forewarning. 

Does this all end with global catastrophe, with flooding and smiting and pillars of salt? It might. Another Trump term could lead to nuclear war, since stability is the greatest deterrent to mutually assured destruction. It will certainly lead to more human suffering from failing to address climate change. But maybe it also leads to a greater realization by the people that our ways are wrong. We’ve gotten too off course in terms of what matters and what it means to be a human being. We’ve put our faith in the wrong values and Trump is the ultimate manifestation of that. 

I know that a biblical allegory in today’s highly advanced, sophisticated modern world seems absurd, but there’s an old joke that may indicate otherwise. 

Here’s how it goes: a very religious man is living in the countryside and the rains come. The countryside starts to flood and it’s flooding around his house. People in a small boat come by and say, “Get in the boat you’re going to drown!” He says, “No, my heart is pure. God will save me and I will wait for a message from him.” 

The water keeps rising and the bottom half of his house floods. He goes upstairs and he’s looking out the window. A larger boat comes by pack with drenched people who have been flooded out of their homes. The captain says, “Get in the boat and we can save you.” The man says, “No, I am waiting for God. He will save me. He will send me a message.” 

The water keeps rising, and the man is stuck on his roof. A helicopter flies over the house and drops a  ladder. The pilot yells down to the man, “Climb the ladder, and we can save you. You’re going to drown!” The man says, “No, I’m waiting for God and he will tell me what to do.” The man drowns

Now we’re up at the Pearly Gates. The man says to God, “God, why did you forsake me? I was pure of heart and waited for your message to tell me what to do.”

God replies, “Tell you what to do? Send you a message? I sent a boat, I sent a bigger boat, and I sent a helicopter. How many messages do you need?”