Skip to main content

Trump’s Two Bibles



Donald Trump is an exceptional man in many ways.  He proved that during his swearing in ceremony too.  He took the oath placing his palm on two bibles one of which was presented by his mother and the other was used by none other than Abraham Lincoln.

I have always wondered what religion really means to people like Trump whose hearts are awash with hatred (in addition to greed, lust, and much else).  Trump has his own ‘amen corner’ in Paula White’s place of worship.  Ms White is one of the spiritual advisers of Trump.  In fact, no less than six such religious persons including Ms White prayed for Trump during his swearing in ceremony.  Two bibles and six preachers.  And a lot of allegations of the sleazy kind behind the backdrop.  Trump is indeed an exceptional man.

The religious people who prayed over him are also exceptional.  Paula White uses religion as a commercial enterprise.  She is a Prosperity-gospel preacher.  God wants you to be rich: that’s their basic teaching.  She uses religion to become richer.  You become rich and help us also to become rich by giving us a share of your income in the name of God.  Her religion is quite as simple as that.  “The richer you are, the more God loves you,” she preaches.  God is listening to her prayers if her wealth is any indication.  No wonder Trump loves her. 

Samuel Rodriguez is another right wing preacher who yokes wealth with his god and was invited to pray on the occasion of the swearing-in.  In addition to his abiding faith in wealth, he believes that the religious freedom of Christians is under threat in America and Trump will be the Messiah of the Christians.  Interestingly, in his first Presidential address, Trump proclaimed himself as the leader of the “lost” people.  Should we hear it as the “lost sheep” of the Bible?

Franklin Graham, son of America’s most renowned evangelist Billy Graham, also blessed Trump on the swearing-in occasion with his physical presence.  Graham Jr sees devils everywhere: in LGBT people and their supporters, Muslims, “the progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,” and secularism, to name a few.  One of his professed goals is to place the American school education system in the hands of evangelical Christians.

With so much of religious fervour for company, Trump did well with two bibles beneath his palm.  

The tragedy is that most people who display their religious fervour so conspicuously end up creating hells for others.  If people are willing to donate their money in order to make Paula White richer, it’s their problem and we need not concern ourselves with it.  But when those who refuse to make the donations or accept the hate-filled teachings of these preachers as gospel truths are labelled as the lost sheep (or “anti-national” as it happens in India), there is bound to be a problem.  That’s why Trump’s double-bible-swearing is portentous.




Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. SHONJanuary 23, 2017 at 1:32 AM

    Very interesting blog post! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathJanuary 23, 2017 at 8:58 AM

    Well written satirical post...

    ReplyDelete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरJanuary 23, 2017 at 11:17 AM

    Absolutely correct Sir. Let's see now what happens to the U.S. (and the world as well) during the next four years of his presidentship.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 23, 2017 at 12:09 PM

      The funniest thing is that Trump himself is a product of a lot miscegenation. The height of irony is that such a man is fighting immigration! Yes, let's wait and watch. After all, America controls the world to a great extent even today.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
25 comments
Read more