We saw in Part One how Shift and his successors came to rule over the lovable but gullible Narnians by misrepresenting the truth about Aslan. In so doing, they successfully reduced free creatures to the state of indentured servants, leaving them confused and heartbroken, as if the Great Aslan himself had somehow betrayed them.
You will not be surprised to hear that I view what is happening in America under Donald Trump as being akin to what happened to Narnia under Shift. When the comparison sprung to mind, I thought I had come up with an original idea, but I am not the first to discover that there is nothing new under the sun! As I was completing my piece, I came across this article by Robin Bates from 2019, and then discovered a series that Peter Mead posted in 2023 which draws similar conclusions, as well as this extremely interesting feature by Bob Smietana. [1]
The ambitious Shift somehow contrived to persuade the Narnians that he had heard from Aslan, and convinced them that his coming to power, and the sweeping changes he was setting in motion, were all the great Lion’s will. From our perspective it seems painfully obvious that Trump is following a similar path, having successfully sought the support of many evangelical Christians, and even suggested that Christian values were centre-front in his politicking. Some of his actions do indeed affirm certain core truths, such as the fact that God has only created two genders, and countless believers have been only too glad to believe that he stands for traditional morality and godliness.
Many were excited to hear him being prayed for during the Inauguration ceremony – but even here we need discernment: up-tempo though Lorenzo Sewell’s prayer undoubtedly was, a number of interceding friends were uncomfortable with its underlying thrust toward American greatness and political triumph rather than surrender to the Lord Almighty. This is a really important distinction.
When people start with their own vision – MAGA in this case – then it is almost inevitable that they will pray prayers that effectively ask the Lord to confirm that vision. And because many who support him really do have a lively and a living faith, then why would God not honour that? Real works of salvation and healing are plainly being accomplished. The mistake comes in thinking that this means that God is approving every aspect of the Trumpian revolution – for this indeed is what it amounts to.
Far-reaching Executive Orders may incite great hurrahs in certain quarters, but the crowds that very understandably applauded and rejoiced in Trump’s statement about men not being allowed to participate in women’s sports appeared to be just as elated at the thought of America reclaiming the Panama Canal – ignoring completely the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that Panama is ripping America off.
Would it not be nearer to the truth to say that Trump enjoys inventing enemies even where there are none, thereby stirring dangerous fires of nationalism? It is common knowledge that the man who was guilty of mowing down so many people on the streets of New Orleans was an American-born army veteran, radicalised by Isis over the course of the last six months, yet Trump continued to insist that he was a murderous migrant. As so often happens when people are in situ, one senses he has forgotten the migrant roots of his own and so very many other American families.
Though there will surely be some in the party who are struggling with their consciences, many of Trump’s ambitious colleagues are content to play along with such fallacious remarks, no doubt for fear of losing their jobs if they oppose the president. But those from swing constituencies have to balance this with the fear of losing their seats should voters turn against them!
Despite the President and the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claiming that theirs is a unified party, pray that some may have the courage to resist that which needs resisting.
Executive orders
Watching what Trump is doing now, one American friend commented that it is hard not to see the usurping Shift sitting in tawdry state and flaunting a paper crown, throwing his weight about, issuing demands and shutting up those who dare to disagree with him.
For all that Trump demands agreement within his party, he is increasingly circumnavigating the proper channels of government, discarding constitutional norms and instead drawing all authority to himself through a spate of executive orders. But America was not set up in such a way that the President should rule through executive orders alone – especially when it comes to such things as shutting down payments to people such as USAID workers.
The lives of thousands, even millions even are being thrown into disarray. Whether immigrants (illegal and legal), federal agency inspectors general, civil servants accused of skiving if they work from home, National Labor Relations Board members, or Department of Justice employees, USAID partners – those who no longer appeal to Trump’s agenda are being tossed aside. The scale of this revolution is simply huge.
Much, to be sure, is being done for show. Expelling handcuffed migrants in military planes, and claiming that they are all mass murderers makes for strong optics, but this smacks rather of the cruelty and entertainment of the Caesars. Some migrants are so terrified that they are avoiding going into work or have gone into hiding, despite the protection that they should have under the 1st and 4th Amendments of the Constitution.
Pray for each person and family who has risked all to enter America, but is now facing forcible ejection. Pray too for what happens to those who are so ejected. It cannot but be a strain for their countries of origin to receive so many back again.
When the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, suggested Trump should exercise mercy, one senior Republican demanded her deportation, while Trump himself demanded that she apologise to America. However much he may claim to be a champion of free speech, his response made it clear that this is a President with a thin skin, who will not tolerate criticism. He is even tying requests for emergency federal aid to leaders in disaster-hit regions agreeing with his agenda.
John Bunyan’s great hymn opens with the God seeking person’s first avowed intent being to be a pilgrim. But Trump has made it clear that his ‘avowed intent’ for his second presidency is to exact revenge on his political opponents. Is that really the spirit we wish to see prevailing in the land? This is such an important matter, that I have dedicated a ‘spur’ off this post to the matter of retribution. Please follow the link.
It does not require a prophet to realise where and to what lengths such a sprit could potentially lead. See this essay published in April 2024.
The slippery slope
It is no secret that Trump encouraged his leading campaigners to say whatever they like in order to get elected, without regard to the truth of what they were saying. Unsurprisingly, he has required every member of his cabinet to sign up to the belief that the 2020 election was rigged.
This particular lie has, on its own, struck a terrible blow at the foundations of the nation, in that many Americans are now convinced that the whole electoral system is corrupt and exploitative.
The Bible is clear that ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.’ (Prov. 12:22) As Revelation 22:15 makes plain, they are also eternally dangerous to those who deliberately practise falsehood. When leaders, especially those in the Church, refuse to acknowledge this, it prepares the way for millions of people to believe things that have no basis in reality and to give glory only to the ‘father of lies.’
David Dark, Professor of Religion and the Arts at Belmont University in Nashville, reminds us that,
“Small things really matter . . . Righteousness has to be sought in the specifics if it’s to be sought at all. Generalization, as Lewis understands, is tyranny’s fuel supply. Specificity cuts it off. . .. Small deceptions add up quickly, till we can no longer tell right from wrong, and truth from a lie.”
Writing in the article I referred to above, Bob Smietana describes Narnia under Shift, and comments,
‘Because of Shift’s lies and the fake news about Aslan, no one is willing to trust anyone or to even look for the truth when it is right in front of their face. The country falls apart and eventually, the world itself falls apart.’
How right Sir Walter Scott was when he said, ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.’ So many end up snared in it. A lie told for gain spread like a cancer through Narnia and undermined the fabric of trust that had long held the country together. As Bob Smietana reminds us, ‘Once trust is lost, it is almost impossible to regain. The Narnians learned that too late. By telling their story, Lewis hoped we’d listen and avoid their fate.’
Who will have the courage to object to the lies of the Trump administration? As Lewis warns in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.”
Facts can make us uncomfortable. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis describes the discovery of Narnia world by Lucy and Edmund, the younger two of the four siblings. Lucy tells her somewhat sceptical older brother and sister all about it, and looks to Edmund to back her up – but he chooses not to do so. Are Peter and Susan going to believe their young and impressionable sister, or her slightly older and – as it turns out – untrustworthy brother? Brian Kobelien writes that this is an ‘example of a philosophical conundrum: when there are two conflicting stories, which one do you believe?’
A similar conundrum is being presented to Americans in the form of who and what to believe when it comes to environmental issues. The evidence that human behaviour is impacting our climate is overwhelming and incontrovertible – but Donald Trump tells a very different story, and millions have been persuaded to cheer his decision to remove America from the Paris Climate Agreement, and to open ‘green belt territory’ to ecologically-disastrous oil and gas exploitation.
This article from ‘McGill, Office for Science and Society’, details Trump’s ill-informed attacks on wind turbines, and is well worth reading because it illustrates how shallow and superficial his grasp of this topic really is. Yet his policies concerning it will seriously and adversely affect the nation.
Trump has mounted the presidential platform on the basis of making America great again, putting it first above all else, including science-based evidence about the global climate. But is this not to make the nation of America an idol in the Lord’s sight and hearing? There are believers who prefer to see it rather as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to implement a form of Christian nationalism. But though they flock to call Trump ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ I fear that these are no coals by which people can warm themselves safely, because what he is actually stoking are fires born of flesh rather than the Spirit.
Once, when Joshua heard the noise of the Israelites shouting in the camp, he told Moses that he thought he could hear the sound of war. But Moses knew better. He discerned not the sound of war, but of idol worship. (Ex. 32:17ff) So far from worshipping Yahweh, the Israelites were lifting up a golden calf as the god who had brought them out of Egypt. Is America not in grave danger now of bowing down to its long-held but overinflated belief in its own ‘manifest destiny’ and exceptionalism?[2]
What sort of nation will America become under Donald Trump?
When Abraham’s Lincoln made his second Inaugural speech, he declared, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”
What a contrast with Donald Trump’s speech as he began his second term in office! He was more concerned to air his grievances and announce the reversal of decisions made by the previous administration and its courts of justice – while all the time being undergirded by fervent praying Christians. What will these things do for the cause of Christ in America? How many will miss out on salvation because they have seen or heard a caricature of the faith being peddled by people whose real heart ambitions are more for their own self-interests than for Christ? Such attitudes and actions carry a tariff heavier by far than any that Donald Trump could ever impose on foreign imports.
By what spirit?
At one point in The Last Battle, as Shift is trying to persuade Puzzle to pretend to be Aslan, he says to his naive companion,
“But think of the good we could do!” said Shift. “You’d have me to advise you, you know. I’d think of sensible orders for you to give. And everyone would have to obey us, even the King himself. We would set everything right in Narnia.” “But isn’t everything right already?” said Puzzle.
Just as there was plenty that was amiss in America under Biden, so there were certainly things that were wrong in Narnia as Shift took the opportunity to grasp hold of power. But what spirit lay behind his claim to ‘set everything right in Narnia?’
This, then, is always my question when it comes to any leader: by what spirit are they operating? Trump thrives on making out that everything is dire and terrible, and that only he is able to put it right. A good many Christians seem to agree with him. Some of his policies are certainly deeply pleasing to those who take a strongly conservative line on biblical teaching about sex and gender. He has ‘signed an Executive Order to end the use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion,’ and another one to ‘defund gender transitions for those under 19.’ Does this make him a godly man? He is happy to be prayed for (by those who wish to please him) and he has actively sought the support of the evangelical church (as an electoral strategy). Is this the work of the Holy Spirit? It takes immense humility and maturity to recognise the responsibilities the privilege of his position bring: do we see these qualities in him?
Tragically, I believe Trump and his team to be motivated more by powerful ambitions for power and profit than by the pursuit of all that is godly and Kingdom-centred. We can learn a lot about a man by the company that he keeps, and the people whom he appoints. When the members of his cabinet are known to hold bizarre opinions about the subject of their office, then may people have the courage to question their appointment while there is yet time.
And when he appears to be favouring his son, Donald Trump Jnr, over his Vice-President for a successor, then how can we not be deeply troubled at the prospect of a very heavy yoke indeed falling upon the American people, and all that might mean for the whole world? It is never too early to pray for what happens a few years down the line in America.
To be sure, God has certainly raised up some pretty unlikely (and even unsavoury) people as leaders of nations, including deeply flawed characters such as Samson, Saul, and Jehu, but we are not called to glory in the turmoil.
Evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction in it, and I believe that we are at a tipping point. In The Last Battle, Shift fools many, but in turn becomes the plaything of powers far greater than his own and is destroyed . . . and so many others fall too because they have followed him. There is a terrifying moment toward the end of the book when a dreadful, demonic creature passes over the heads of the Narnian leaders, scaring them rigid.
“It has come to dwell among us. They have called it and it has come,” says the king.
To which Puzzle responds,
“I see now that I really have been a very bad donkey. I ought never to have listened to Shift. I never thought things like this would begin to happen.”
The only one who was able to ‘set things right’ in Narnia was Aslan – although the reality of what that ‘rightness’ looked like was utterly different to anything anyone had imagined. And the only One who can set things right in America is the Lord Jesus Christ – and it’s possible that His solution to its problems may not look like anything we imagine either! Just as the true Narnians longed for Aslan, may the true people of God rise up and cry out for deliverance from evil for America.
Lord, we want no false gods ruling the hearts of the American people. You, Lord, and You alone are the One we love and desire! Father, we pray that many will wake up and take whatever stand and action is required. Overrule and bless all in Donald Trump that You can possibly bless. We pray that You will yet take hold of him, and make him a force for good. If he were only to humble himself and genuinely commit his life to You, it is lovely to think all he could do!
We pray that his desire to act as ‘Disruptor-in-chief’ may yet yield place to the desire to serve. Even so, we pray You will find ways to use him to accomplish truly necessary things, for all that they may have to be worked by a very ‘blunt’ instrument.
We cry to You, Father, for integrity, honesty and wise decisions in the courts of every state in America, up to and including the Supreme Court. Keep America from sliding into lawlessness at this time, and bring a harvest of souls to You who are full of love for You and free from the taint and curse of political extremism.
You alone see the whole picture, Lord, but may we play our part each one of us in praying against the imposition of wrong in America and far beyond, and for the triumph of grace and truth. Raise up true and valiant pilgrims for Yourself.
All who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster,
Let them in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make them once relent
Their first avowed intent
To be true pilgrims.
Who so beset them round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
Their strength the more is.
No foes shall stay their might;
Though they with giants fight,
They will make good their right
To be true pilgrims.
Since, Lord, you will defend
Us with your Spirit,
We know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away!
We’ll fear not what they say,
We’ll labour night and day
To be true pilgrims.
Thank you, Robert. This is so good. Thanks for your effort to put it together. I have recently enjoyed studying the Chronicles of Narnia and found your observations really enlightening.