Introduction
The results of the election have brought about a palpable sense of relief among conservative Christians. None of us will have to announce to our families, two days after the Inauguration, that our patience with the Harris administration is completely exhausted. This is good because we were already all exhausted two months into the Obama run, and never really got our strength back.
During the Trump administration, we will not have to deal with that sort of fatigue, that kind of enervation . . . I don’t know, that type of civic lassitude. Under Project 2025, undue use of the thesaurus will be banned. Under Trump, there will, of course, be some gaudy and overdone spectacles, some of them quite entertaining, some of them a bit dismaying, but most of them greatly encouraging.
Because we know and understand that Trump is not our savior, and that he brings no final deliverance with him, what are we to do with this sense of relief? How are we to understand it? We should understand this period as the Trump reprieve, a time during which the Church should make a point of returning to the things we ought to have been doing all along. Call it the Trump respite, the Trump breather. The fact that we were not doing these things before is a big part of what got us into this mess, and there will be a temptation to think that the thing is now settled. Some will think that the election “fixed it.”
But it is by no means settled, and so I believe the Church just has a window of somewhere between two and four years to return to the things that could set the stage for a genuine reformation and revival.
What are those things? There are many, but I have listed seven of the most important that I think are crucial for our time. We don’t need to get anything through Congress in order to give ourselves to these seven opportunities.
Jehoshaphat’s Choir
Because Jehoshaphat believed the words that the prophet Jahaziel had spoken to him, he displayed one of the greatest acts of faith found in the entire Old Testament. He went out to battle with the choir in the vanguard.
“And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten.”2 Chronicles 20:22 (KJV)
Worship is the driver of history. False worship leads us into cultural dead ends, and true worship sets us on the right path again. While it is true, as the late Andrew Breitbart said, that culture is upstream from politics, we must always go a step further. Worship is upstream from culture.
You become like what you worship (Ps. 115: 4-8). Those who worship savage gods become savage. Those who worship lustful gods are consumed with lust. Those who worship the gods of covetousness become greedy, and deeply soiled with mammon-slop. And more to our current place in the story, those who worship demented gods . . . lose their minds.
This problem cannot be solved by attaching the name of Jehovah to the worship of a pagan god. This strategy of syncretism was attempted by Aaron when he proclaimed a festival to YHWH in front of the golden calf (Ex. 32:4-5). But that cut no ice with Moses, not at all. The Levites were still sent out with swords in hand.
Far too many evangelical churches have drifted into forms of cotton candy worship. They sing songs that make it sound like Jesus is their girlfriend. Substitute Sheila for Jesus, and the song still works. But we are actually gathering to worship Jehovah, the God of battles, and so the liturgy should not come off like it was choreographed by Tinker Bell. These are serious times, and so we should be worshiping like serious adult Christians.
For further reading: A Primer on Worship and Reformation
Put Away Your Idols
No reformation is possible unless we put away our idols. This process has to begin with our household gods before we attempt anything out in the public square.
“Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments.”Genesis 35:2 (KJV)
It is striking that Jacob has to tell his household this. He was the grandson of Abraham, who had abandoned the gods of his fathers to serve Jehovah, and yet idolatry always has a way of creeping back in. Here is how the apostle John concludes his first epistle to believers.
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.”1 John 5:21 (KJV)
They are children of God, and yet he has to caution them to steer clear of idolatry. And why does he say this? Because they might not. So in this moment, Christians should make a point of putting away any household gods they might have.
On the assumption that no evangelical Christian has a “god shelf” where they burn candles and say prayers, what sort of household gods am I talking about? The New Testament extends the prohibition of idolatry in principle to things like covetousness (Col. 3:5), and one of the central things that the Ten Commandments puts off limits is coveting your neighbor’s wife (Ex. 20: 17) . . . or his concubine, for that matter. Illicit sex is one of the drivers of envy and discontent. Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled (Heb. 13:4). The next verse is telling. Be content with what you have (Heb. 13:5).
So put away your porn. And put away your dalliances with porn in the more “acceptable” form of mainstream entertainment. If reformation in this area happens, then we will be in a position to deal with the sexual corruptions of our public life. But the temples we have built to all the lust monkeys will not be leveled until believers mortify (which means kill) the lust monkey being kept in a cage in the basement of their heart.
“And when Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of the Lord, that was before the porch of the Lord.”2 Chronicles 15:8 (KJV)
For further reading: Idols for Destruction
Read Your Bible
If we have two to four years to prepare, you should undertake to read your Bible clean through the same number of times. However many years God gives us to prepare for the next great clash, and there will be one, we ought to have read the Bible that many times
The basic division in society is between those who live in accordance with the Word of God and those who refuse to live in accordance with the Word of God. When young people turn to the Word, they are in a position to surpass their elders.
“I have more understanding than all my teachers: For thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, Because I keep thy precepts.”Psalm 119:99–100 (KJV)
But when young people fill themselves up with self-flattery and vain conceits, instead of with Scripture, they become puffed up and bloated, and they think they know far more than they do. They become Jeroboam’s young bucks, the ones who lost him most of his kingdom (1 Kings 12:10). The Word tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to (Rom 12:3), and the only path into this sort of wisdom and self-knowledge is to be steeped in the Scriptures.
And there is a similar pattern here as the one we saw with regard to getting rid of idols. You get rid of your hidden personal idols before the outrage in the public square can be pulled over. There has to be personal renewal in Gideon’s heart before he got up the nerve to pull down the Baal in his father’s front yard (Judg. 6:27). In the same way, personal ignorance of the Bible needs to be eliminated before we can deal with our widespread cultural ignorance of our biblical heritage.
When we start reading our Bibles again, then our leaders will start reading their Bibles again. And when they do that, we will have sons of Issachar again, who will understand the times and know what Israel ought to do (1 Chron. 12:32). And a Bible reading people cannot be enslaved.
Those who are steeped in the Scriptures will see one another accurately, and will place the antithesis correctly—between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. They will know who their friends are. They will not adopt the techniques of critical theory, drawing arbitrary lines between this identity group and that one. Those who move in biblical categories will not be susceptible to attempts from the world to redefine all the categories.
For further reading: The Bible Reading Challenge. This is a unique Bible reading program, in that you read through the entire Bible in sync with thousands of others in the program. You read the whole Bible over 9 months, and then the New Testament separately over the summer. And then in the autumn you start over again. It is incredibly rewarding.
Love Your Wife, Obey Your Husband
Too many evangelical men believe that loving their wives means obeying their wives, and far too many wives believe that obeying their husbands simply means being affectionate toward them. From this category confusion, a lot of our modern ills have sprung.
Human society is hierarchical, and that divinely appointed hierarchy extends into the center of the home, into the relationship of husband and wife. The husband is the head. The wife is not the head. Modern egalitarianism wants to say that the gospel erases all that, but in actual fact a rightly ordered marriage adorns the gospel (Eph. 5:25-27). Moreover, a misshapen marriage, twisted by the lies of feminism, results in the gospel being blasphemed (Tit. 2:3-5).
Husbands, love your wives. Do this while pursuing true masculinity, which is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. Wives, respect your husbands. Honor them, look up to them, and obey them. And pastors, if the bride’s vow to obey her husband has somehow drifted out of the wedding ceremony, put it back in again. Repent, and put it back in again.
Most conservative Christian women have taken on more assumptions of feminism than they think they have. Many Christian men have not internalized these assumptions, but they are willing to act like they have because they have been successfully cowed. The set up is truly oppressive, for men and women both, but unfortunately the only way many men can figure out how to take a stand against it is by getting into sin. Either they erupt into the old-fashioned sort of sin (e.g. angry outbursts), or they descend into the dismal swamp of misogyny. These are the men who have discovered that it is easier to hate women than to stand up to them, and this is where a lot of the toxicity of our current moment is coming from.
But it should be possible to say no to a woman without acting like a toad. And it should be possible for a woman to learn to obey her husband as the Scriptures require without becoming a feminist’s caricature of a doormat.
“To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”Titus 2:5 (KJV)
For further reading: Reforming Marriage
Rescue Your Kids
Christians simply must get their children out of the government schools. The Bible requires fathers to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). The Scriptures give us the greatest commandment of all, the command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Dt. 6:4-9), in a passage that is all about education and child-rearing. Covenant children are supposed to grow up in an environment dominated by the Word of God—when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you sitting in the car at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. All the time. Christian kids need a Christian education, which means they need to grow up in a Christian environment.
The government schools are the engine of our cultural unbelief, and it is the continued participation of Christians that is keeping this system from collapsing. All Christian parents should want to get their kids out. And if circumstances, like the financial realities, make this impossible, then the churches should come to the rescue in order to help these parents get their kids out.
If your kids are already out, then thank the Lord, and return to the work of teaching and equipping them with a renewed zeal. This is a big part of what must happen.
Nobody is going to believe that we want to rescue America if we are refusing to rescue our own kids.
For further reading: Excused Absence
Tell the Right Stories
As a popular podcast has it, stories are soul food.
The right kind of story shapes and strengthens the imagination, and it is the Christian imagination that has atrophied to the point where we don’t understand much anything anymore.
The gospel is a story. The history of the human race is a story. The slow build of our redemption over millennia is a story. When we grasp this, internalizing it, we start to craft stories of our own—becoming, as Tolkien put it, sub-creators. Only God can create stories ex nihilo, but we are privileged to imitate him by fashioning stories out of preexisting materials.
Life over the course of the next two to four years is going to be quite the story, and we will only be ready for it if we have learned how to see it as a story. But we will not be able to do that if the collective Christian imagination is anorexic—as it has been.
This is not escape from the fight. It is an essential part of the fight. Tell stories. Read them. Write them. Then you will perhaps be in a position to live one.
For further reading: The Dragon’s Tooth
Make Money
The progressive left has not gone away, and they are nowhere close to giving up. Trump’s hand is a lot stronger in this term than it was in his first term. The impeachment strategy has come up empty, and the lawfare approach has completely failed, and the artificial pandemic crisis is not likely to work again. Trump now has control of both houses of Congress, which he didn’t have the first time. He won the popular vote, and there appears to be widespread recognition that he does in fact have a mandate.
So the commies only have two options for stopping Trump, or so they think. One of them would be to start a catastrophic war, which is apparently being tried currently in the U.S. enabled escalation between Ukraine and Russia. So efforts are certainly being made in that direction. The second option the bad guys have is the option of creating a monumental financial crisis. Let Trump get into office, and then do something to the economy that can be pinned on him. They did something similar the first time with the pandemic and lockdowns, but this one is likely to be far more direct and a much bigger deal.
Trump’s only feasible strategy to avoid an economic catastrophe of this sort is to try to have the economy outrun it by means of massive deregulation. This is something he wants to do anyway for reasons of business, but he should also want to do it as a political strategy.
This is the strategy of getting the government out of the way. Instead of looking to government as the solution, there needs to be a deep recognition that government is a huge part of the problem. But the commies cannot be prevailed upon to think this way. If our scientists discovered that a giant asteroid was going to crash into Nebraska, the liberal response would be to create a new cabinet position—Department of Asteroid Avoidance. That is not the way.
Now if this deregulation happens at the scale where it is likely to happen, then there will be a Trump boom. In that Trump boom, there will be many opportunities. Those will be opportunities to make money. And, as my son said to me once, “money is bullets.” Christians should seize any such opportunity to make money, not because you want to buy a second yacht, but rather because there are churches to plant, schools to build, books to publish, ministries to support, and people to feed.
Is there a temptation to greed? Yes, there is. Is there a temptation to bury your talent in a napkin? Yeah, wicked and lazy servants do that. So resist both temptations.
Feeling guilty over making money is feeling guilty for doing your duty.
For further reading: The Good of Affluence