On President Trump and Going to Heaven

On Tuesday President Donald Trump was interviewed by Fox and Friends on the current situation with Ukraine and Russia. During this interview, the President offered the following statement: “If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s a pretty– I want to try to get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing that 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.” This off-the-cuff statement reveals a lot, and I want to dig into what this means and some of the implications of this statement.

Now some will probably argue that this was nothing more than a joke. And at one level, yes, this was obviously said tongue-in-cheek. The president’s words were shared in a light-hearted manner and were intended to draw a chuckle. But the Bible teaches that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). To use a modern phrase, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.”

It’s been a while since America has thought much about Donald Trump’s religion. So let’s do a brief recap of where we have been over the years. During the run up to his 2016 campaign Trump claimed to be a Presbyterian, but followed that up with the claim that he had never asked God for forgiveness. Unless, he offered, you wanted to count his taking of communion. Obviously, this means that Trump was certainly not a Christian at that time. This is in contrast to the claim of Paula White that Trump accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Later James Dobson would claim that Trump was a Christian, only to slightly walk that back.

But if there was any doubt or question before, the case is pretty clear after the president’s remarks. And while it was obviously said as a joke, I think he also meant it. Donald Trump is infamous for his playboy persona. In fact, a leaked audio tape of his filthy speech almost cost him the nomination and election. Everybody knew he was twice divorced. If someone like that has a conscience, why wouldn’t he be looking for some sort of absolution? And while a certain portion of the public can see nothing more than a cold, unfeeling monster when they see the president, I think it makes a lot more sense to see a person. A person who knows he’s done wrong, who knows his time on earth is drawing to a close, and who thinks that maybe now he has the chance to do some real good.

And as far as good works go, ending the war between Russia and Ukraine would be pretty good. His point that 7,000 people a week are dying is well-taken. If he is able to broker a peace deal, a peace deal that even he acknowledges is anything but sure, but if he were able to broker that peace deal he would be saving thousands and thousands of lives from being lost in a long, pointless, protracted war. I doubt I will ever be able to do something to save that many people. That’s pretty good, all things considered. If getting into heaven were as simple as doing enough “good” to outweigh the “bad,” this would be a lot of good.

The only problem is that it’s not enough. The Bible clearly teaches that good works don’t save us (Titus 3:5; Galatians 2:16; Romans 3:20; Ephesians 2:8-9). It is only through belief in Christ and His atoning work that we can be rescued from our sin and spared from the righteous wrath of God (Romans 3:21-26; 6:23). This is the basic gospel message that we find clearly laid out for us in God’s Word.

Now, the thing that I find interesting is that President Trump should know this. What I am sharing is nothing secret or earth shattering. It’s what every gospel preaching church teaches. It’s the standard gospel presentation of Protestant Christianity, the largest religious group in America. And it’s not as if there haven’t been people in President Trump’s orbit to tell him the truth. His mother came from a very religious background, and the Bible on which he was inaugurated was a family Bible. During Trump’s first term, his vice-president was an avowed Christian who faithfully practiced his Christianity. So how could the president have missed this?

Paul warned about this in 1 Corinthians 3. As a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he wrestled through the rejection of the Jewish Messiah by the Jewish people. In particular, he had a hard time reconciling the fact that in synagogues every week the Scriptures were opened, the very Scriptures that pointed to Jesus, and yet Jews would listen to those Scriptures and reject the One they pointed to. He concluded that it was like a veil over their face, keeping them from seeing the truth. How can such a veil be removed? Only through the work of the Spirit. Only when the God who said, “Let there be light,” chooses to shine the glorious light of the gospel in our hearts. Only then will people be able to see the beauty and truth of the gospel, with the result that they can accept it.

If you’ve been a Christian for some time, you’ve no doubt seen this same frustrating blindness. Perhaps you’ve clearly shared the gospel. You’ve worked through the person’s sin and their need of salvation, pointed to Christ as the only solution, and then asked the question, “So what needs to happen?” I’ve done that and been given the following kinds of answers: “Get better friends.” “Try harder.” “Follow the Ten Commandments.” Deep down, we are all legalists trying to get to heaven by our good works. It’s the default human religion, and it requires the Word of God and the illumination of the Spirit to open our eyes.

I grieve for the president. His words haunt me, not because they are unusual, but because they are such a blunt way of putting the most common heresy sending people to hell. I see a man near the end of his life trying to quiet a guilty conscience by ending wars and bloodshed all over the world, not realizing that he is like someone putting duct tape on a boat that is already completely submerged. I pray that the Holy Spirit would use His Word to open Trump’s eyes, so that he can see what is clearly there in Scripture: salvation and right standing before God comes by faith and not works.

As I was working on this article, my two oldest children were rambunctiously playing in my office. I was playing the audio of Trump’s interview to make sure I got his quote right, and when I finished my daughter piped up. “That’s not how you get to heaven.” “That’s right,” I replied. “How do we get to heaven?” Without skipping a beat, my 6-year-old daughter said, “By asking Jesus to forgive us.” I share this story to point out that the gospel isn’t hard to grasp; it’s hard to accept. It’s not that hard to understand that we can do nothing to save ourselves. It doesn’t take a high IQ to realize that only by trusting in Christ’s work can we have salvation, but innately we want to do it ourselves. We want to think that we can be good enough to make up for the bad. Our pride doesn’t want to give up, and so we charge ahead trying to stack up our good works to make up for our rebellion against our Creator. But what the Bible teaches us, and what the president and all of us need to realize is that such works will never be enough. No, not even if we end wars.

 

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. This article originally appeared on his Substack.

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Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography on Unsplash