I Appeal to Caesar
There are plenty of calls for Trump to accept the election results and graciously step down, all adding strength to the notion that what he is doing is ugly, self-serving, and a blot on the nation’s character. Even some prominent Republicans are joining the chorus. Trump is a sore loser. Trump is an embarrassment. And so on.
The matter of character has led a number of evangelicals to find it increasingly difficult to continue supporting Trump. Christian businessman Sid Jansma wrote, just prior to the election, that “Trump has gathered around him his own posse of immoral and lawless and divisive people. Trump isn’t just a bombastic fake, Trump is a harmful fake. I’d rather support a good Democrat than a bad Republican.” And so the line goes. Trump is not nice. Trump is boorish. Trump is behaving in a manner that Christians should not support.
That sentiment is actually a falsehood.
What Trump is essentially doing, aside from the question of whether he is a Christian or not (that discussion can happen another day, and has nothing really to do with the question whether he should concede or fight on), is appealing to Caesar. And to appeal to Caesar is a manifestly proper thing for a Christian to do, notwithstanding how it may look. Because that is what Paul did.
“And when [Festus] was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove. While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Cæsar, have I offended any thing at all. But Festus, willing to do the Jews a pleasure, answered Paul, and said, Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these things before me? Then said Paul, I stand at Cæsar’s judgment seat, where I ought to be judged: to the Jews have I done no wrong, as thou very well knowest. For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die: but if there be none of these things whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Cæsar. Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Cæsar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go” (Acts 25:7-12).
Paul was willing to accept a judgment against him even if unjust. But he saw no problem with availing himself of legal means of defense.
And as for whether or not it is necessary for Trump to behave as a gentleman and graciously accept his fate, we recall that Jesus himself was not so gentlemanly when he stormed around in the temple one fateful day.
What Trump sees, and what is becoming increasingly possible, perhaps even probable, is that there were some serious shenanigans in play on election day in America. The day after the election as John Daniel Jorgenson of The Federalist noted, some stunning irregularities began to emerge. These things are not raising merely the eyebrows of wild conspiracy theorists. And there soon followed some inescapable logic from sensible observer Joy Pullman: the GOP won widespread victories across the nation: “Now as localities run by Democrats ‘count’ votes under suspicious circumstances, we are supposed to believe that voters selected coattails detached from a coat?” None of this adds up; it’s not merely disappointing; it doesn’t make sense. “We are supposed to believe the same media-Democrat complex that fed us wildly erroneous polls all year, and runs false information operations on us about coronavirus, the Russia hoax, and everything else they can use to steal power, that this blue wave’s evaporation did not at all affect the top of the ticket?”
It is essentially pietist, not Christian, to say that the right thing to do is to be a gentleman and nobly accept defeat, when there is a growing mountain of evidence to support the charge that this election may well have been stolen, and not won by the opposition fair and square.
We may yet have to succumb to a disappointment in the end. But not because it’s somehow Christian to meekly acquiesce. Sometimes, sometimes not. And as for the possibility of a loss, that is far from a foregone conclusion, and as the days draw on, something that is very likely nefarious is beginning to emerge, in polling centers in Philadelphia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, to name a few. These discrepancies are not being grasped at as at straws. 100%-for-Biden vote dumps, Republican observers inexplicably denied the legal right and responsibility to observe vote tallying, count-stopping in the middle of the night for flimsy reasons, precisely when massive Biden tallies come in, and all over the country. These are not wild conspiracy theories, they’re documented observations. Something is rotten here, and it isn’t Hamlet’s Denmark; it’s America.
Fight on, Mr. Trump. Christians have every reason to support your efforts.