Amid the divisions of modern America, the church can rise above political strife and cultural darkness to shine the unifying light of Christ's kingdom to a fractured world.
The 2024 presidential election revealed what we knew to be true: America is no longer a unity of states. This division became explicit after Barack Obama's historic election in 2008 and has only exacerbated over the past eight years and counting. This period will someday be called The Trump Years.
I must admit that I have never seen a person create such shockwaves in a system as Donald Trump has. In fact, a term has been introduced into our lexicon in jest, but I believe it to be true: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). According to the Urban Dictionary, TDS is “a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike of Donald Trump, to the point they will abandon all logic and reason.” Another definition suggests that it is “[a] disease Trump supporters have which causes them to believe his tens of thousands of lies, accept multiple unsupported conspiracy theories, excuse all his offenses and crimes, promote that he's a good man who has learned from his mistakes, and vote against their interests.”[1]
What strikes me as interesting is that TDS can affect detractors and supporters of Donald Trump. While it may not be in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is a plausible phenomenon. However, this blog is not about TDS; it is about JESUS. Because amid all that has transpired, American Christians have made Trump either a Messianic- or antichrist-type figure and forgotten that we don’t belong to the kingdoms of the democrats or republicans; we belong to the kingdom of heaven, also known as the kingdom of God.
Racial, Religious, and Regional Division
At the time of Jesus’s incarnation, Israel was occupied by the great empire of Rome. Because of Rome’s occupation, there was racial and religious tension, there was civil unrest, and the nation of Israel was divided. The country was partitioned into three regions: Judea in the south, Samaria in the center, and Galilee in the north. Judea was the most ethnically Jewish, Samaria was a mixed ethnicity of Jews and Gentiles known as Samaritans, and Galilee was the most ethnically Gentile.
This three-partitioned region was due in part to the civil war that took place after the death of King Solomon between the southern and northern tribes of Israel, which split it into two nations—Judah in the south and Israel in the north (1 Kings 12:1–20). In 733 BC, Assyria annexed the area known as Galilee, and it experienced the heaviest Gentile influence of the three regions. After the invasion of Israel by Assyria in 722 BC, the region known as Samaria was flooded with migrants who mixed with the Israelites who were not deported, resulting in mixed-race people called “Samaritans” (2 Kings 17).
It was in this political, racial, and religious milieu that Jesus was born and began His earthly ministry. Matthew’s account of the start of Jesus’s ministry reads:
Now when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—“The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great Light, And those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, Upon them a Light dawned.” From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:12–17 NASB)
Shining Daylight into Darkness
The divided and disrupted states of Israel were ripe for revival, and Jesus of Nazareth made that His mission. But revival would break forth in a dichotomous situation of darkness and daylight.
1. The People Were Experiencing Dark Days. Israel was God’s chosen light to the nations, but the people were living in darkness. Their darkness was more immense than the Roman soldiers posted in the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants as a permanent possession (Genesis 17:8). Their darkness was the spiritual blindness that dulled their hearing and hardened their hearts toward God. It was a hypocritical religious system led by hypocritical leaders, a dysfunctional social system rampant with divorce and dishonor for parents, and a perverse political system led by a despot who imprisoned God’s prophet for calling out his sins.
America, too, is experiencing dark days. Our religious, social, and political systems are in turmoil because we are suffering from TDS. Christians are smearing each other because they voted for or against Donald Trump, “experts” are encouraging family members not to gather for the holidays if they disagree about Trump, and our elected officials are forced to pledge their allegiance to or against Trump to get elected. Ladies and gentlemen, these are dark days.
But the good news for Israel then and us today is that after John the Baptizer was unjustly arrested, Jesus moved to Capernaum, a place whose name means village of comfort or consolation.[2] A subtle reminder that the depths of darkness can never defeat God’s loving light.
2. The People Envisioned Divine Daylight. It seems highly unorthodox for Jesus to select Galilee as the launch site of His earthly ministry, but it was metaphorically genius. Galilee was the furthest point from Jerusalem, where God’s temple resided. It was the first region to be annexed by Assyria (2 Kings 15:29), and it contained the largest population of Gentiles. Quite simply, it was the darkest part of the land—that is, "without the religious and cultic advantages of Jerusalem and Judea.”[3]
Matthew informs us that Jesus's Galilee launch was more than strategically symbolic; it was spiritually significant because Isaiah had prophesied that Israel’s King would rise upon it like the dawning of a new day by way of Galilee (Isaiah 9:1–2). That light was undoubtedly the light of His presence because He is the light of the world (John 1:4–5). It was also the light of His message. From the far reaches of the nation came a message to Jews and Gentiles alike to change how they related to God because His rule on earth had begun in Jesus.
The light shining in darkness was the Son of God in human flesh, radiating the spiritual, social, and political ethos of heaven’s culture. Jesus exposed people from every nation, kindred, and tongue to what life would be like under God’s rule. That light would shine brighter as Jesus made His way to Jerusalem, reaching its core in His atoning death and triumphant resurrection from the dead.
The mission of Jesus is now the mission of the church. We are the world's light and are responsible for shining in the darkness of our nation. America is the melting pot of the world. People from all over the globe live in and visit America, making it a significant importer and exporter of culture. Like Jesus’s message to the people of Galilee, our message is not progressivism or conservatism. Our message is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Heaven’s kingdom is present on earth through the church. As Lesslie Newbigin said, “The church lives in the midst of history as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the reign of God.”[4]
The Church’s Mission and Mandate
The American church must ask itself, “Are we going to shine into the darkness of our day, or are we going to allow our light to be eclipsed?” The nation needs the church to be the church. We have no King but Jesus. We are in this world, but not of this world (John 17:14). And when we allow political parties or political figures to bring us to internecine warfare, we fail to heed the warning of Jesus that a nation divided against itself will not stand (Matthew 12:25).
Now is the time for the church to return to the Rock of our salvation. Our mission and mandate are to make disciples of every ethnic group (Matthew 28:19–20). It is what Jesus did and what we are supposed to be doing. When we superimpose our politics on top of the gospel of the kingdom, we diminish God’s reign through Jesus and divide our unity in Jesus. So, this is a call back from the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ (Revelation 11:15).
Dr. Isaac Hayes is an Assistant Pastor at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Illinois, and author of Men After God’s Heart: 10 Principles of Brotherly Love. He also has a Doctor of Ministry degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Follow Dr. Hayes on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube at @RevIsaacHayes.
[2] Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Nahum (Person),” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 415; See also p. 1519.
[3] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 117.
[4] Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 110.
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