Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God:  ~Psalm 146:3-5

Seeing a mob of so-called conservatives overrun our nation’s Capitol today was horrifying and something I would never have expected to see. Nor would I ever have expected to see a president of the United States essentially inciting a riot and threatening the vice president he chose himself.

I’ve never liked Donald Trump. I voted against him in the primaries and grew angrier and angrier as people kept voting for him. But when he became the nominee, I held my nose and voted for him out of fear of what Hillary Clinton might do as president. I did the same again this past election for a similar reason — I believed a Trump administration would be friendlier to issues I care about, and I feared what the Democrats would do, particularly if they kept the House and took the Senate.

To be honest, I was really hoping that Trump’s impeachment last year would lead to a conviction and removal from office so that Mike Pence would serve out the rest of Trump’s term. I don’t have a lot of respect for Mike Pence based on his cowardly actions over Indiana’s RFRA law as governor and the fact that he would agree to be Trump’s VP in the first place. But Pence would have behaved much better as president than Donald Trump. We might even be in a better position with the COVID pandemic if Pence had been president.

Despite Trump’s having only two more weeks in office, after his behavior over the past two months and especially after his inciting a riot today, I hope the House and Senate work together to impeach, convict, and remove him from office by this weekend. Then I hope he’s prosecuted for inciting a riot and goes to jail.

I also hope all the senators and representatives who’ve been supporting Trump in this fantasy of a stolen election — particularly those who were planning to object to the electors from certain states today — realize that they bear responsibility for this travesty, as well. Their actions lent legitimacy to Trump’s complaints and both stirred up and helped justify the anger people felt over his loss.

Trump’s actions and the behavior of people who purported to speak on his behalf — and whom he didn’t disavow — have also cost Republicans the Senate, leaving the Democrats free reign now to do whatever they wish. And Trump has left the Republican party in a well-deserved shambles.

I’ve been angry for a long time over the direction the Democrats and the Left have been taking the culture and the country. But I’m even angrier that people — many of whom would claim to share my beliefs — could take part in an attempt to overrun the Capitol during Congress’s perfectly legitimate exercise of its constitutional duty. Joe Biden is not the person I wanted to be president, but he is the person who won the election and this attempt to disrupt the normal transfer of power — an attempt that has now cost at least one life — is beyond all justification.

The psalmist warns us not to put our trust in princes — he could have said presidents — and America’s Christians would do well to heed that warning. Donald Trump is not going to save us, and this election did not take God by surprise; He’s still in control. As the song “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” proclaims, He is not dead nor does He sleep.

We should vote, do our civic duty, and work diligently — but peacefully — for whomever we believe should be in office and for whatever policies we believe should prevail. But once we’ve done our best, we need to leave the results to God. As another old song says, this world is ultimately not our home, and the only prince we should be putting our trust in is the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

Image from pixy.org