What has happened to our country? Are the godless communists are taking over?Are the Haitian immigrants eating our dogs and cats? Are our elections are rigged? Are soccer teams from shithole countries defiling our beloved football stadiums?
(NOTE: Ten African countries qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, setting a historic continent-wide record thanks to the tournament’s expansion. Nine of these nations—Morocco, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Senegal, DR Congo, and Algeria—successfully advanced from the group stage into the Round of 32.)
President Trump is well known as the biggest liar in history. Almost nothing he says is true. He makes multiple false and misleading claims daily. Most of his lies are trivial and self-aggrandizing but some are dangerous. Sadly around 50% of Republican voters believe his lies. His most dangerous lie about the 2020 election being “stolen” led to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. This was the first time a violent mob of American citizens stormed and breached the Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power.
Republican members of Congress and other prominent Republicans refuse to call him out. They know better. Trump’s lies undermine our democratic system. Certain personality types are drawn to telling these sorts of lies, including those with little empathy, such as narcissists and psychopaths. They don’t care about the consequences for the recipient; it’s all about them.
Conservative Christians justify their support for Donald Trump by prioritizing broader political victories—such as appointing conservative judges, advancing anti-abortion policies, and protecting religious liberty—over personal character or factual accuracy. Many view his brash behavior and falsehoods as necessary weapons against a hostile secular culture, framing him as a flawed but divinely chosen figure fighting on their behalf.
The Bible strictly condemns lying, identifying it as contrary to God’s holy nature. Deceit is viewed as a serious sin that harms relationships and breaks trust. Scripture warns that habitual liars ultimately face severe spiritual consequences.
The Ten Commandments explicitly forbid giving false testimony. Verses like Leviticus 19:11 clearly command believers not to deceive or lie to one another. (“You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.”) In John 8:44, Jesus says: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
The President’s big lies are not aimed at our rational selves, but at our unconscious and emotional selves.
Lying can provide the liar with a clear evolutionary advantage. Status, wealth, and achievements are important in the evolutionary battle which is why Trump lies about them. Self-deceit can also be evolutionarily advantageous. If you can convince yourself, then it makes you more convincing to others and more effective.
According to FORBES President Donald Trump on Friday (June 26th) attacked Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) candidates, who recently won major New York primaries, calling them “hardcore, godless communists”, and warning of a “cancer” that’s permeating our country called communism.
“These are hardcore, godless communists,” the president added, calling communism the “most serious threat to our country since its existence.”
“They will close your churches in this country [if] they go communist, and they’re trying to,” Trump said. “They will kill your people and that’s what they’re about. They want to end religion.”
Trump’s rhetoric harkens back to the Red Scare propaganda of Senator Joseph McCarthy that sparked a wave of political paranoia, blacklisting, and unsubstantiated investigations. Americans today should ask Trump the same question Joseph Welch, chief legal counsel for the United States Army, asked McCarthy in 1954: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” This question disarmed McCarthy and eventually led to his downfall and the end of that dark period in our history which Trump has done his best to rekindle.
In an excellent Op-Ed Jared O. Bell argues that “Unchecked billionaire oligarchs are undermining American democracy, not “godless communists.”
He points to the cuts, purges, and “efficiency drives” of Elon Musk and DOGE, to the appointment of businessmen with no prior government experience to lead domestic agencies and foreign negotiations with “glaring conflicts of interest at the very moment when disinterested judgment is most needed.” Fraud and self dealing has seldom if ever been this brazen.
Bell writes “many of the policies being proposed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other democratic socialist candidates, and reflexively branded as “socialism” in the United States, are treated in other advanced democracies as basic public policy … Most Americans do not lie awake at night worrying that democratic socialists will turn the United States into a communist state. They lie awake wondering how they are going to make ends meet, feed their families and pay their bills.”
Bell ends on this strong note: “The real threat to American democracy was never a democratic socialist winning a city primary. It is a system in which a handful of billionaires can reshape public institutions overnight, enrich themselves through the levers of government, and leave the rest of us to argue about labels while we live with the damage.”
Some Christians argue that capitalism best honors human dignity and freedom, that the freedom to own property, labor, and exchange reflects the image of a creative, volitional God. The Acton Institute and thinkers like Michael Novak argue that markets, properly governed, reduce poverty more effectively than any alternative, and that this consequentialist outcome matters morally. Private stewardship also implies personal accountability for one’s use of resources, a recognizably Christian idea. [Note: I studied with Michael Novak at Stanford back in the sixties.]
Many Christian thinkers, from the Catholic social teaching tradition (Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus) to Protestant liberation theologians) argue that socialism’s emphasis on solidarity, common good, and structural care for the poor maps more naturally onto the Sermon on the Mount and Acts 2–4, where early Christians held goods in common. Figures like Reinhold Niebuhr believed capitalism’s tendency toward greed and inequality required significant social correction. Pope Francis drew heavily on this tradition. Pope Leo XIV appears to be moving in the same direction.
Christian ethics consistently condemns treating the poor as disposable, the idolatry of wealth or the market, and systems that structurally exclude the vulnerable. It affirms the dignity of every person, personal obligations of solidarity and charity, and limits on the accumulation of power or wealth.
Most mainstream Christian traditions today, whether Catholic, mainline Protestant, or Orthodox, land somewhere in the mixed economy space. That is markets regulated in service of human dignity, with robust social protections. Pure capitalism troubles them for its indifference to inequality; communism troubles them for its atheism and statism; socialism varies widely depending on what one means by it.
The Bible teaches very little in terms of economics. Instead it teaches principles: human dignity, honest work, care for the poor, hospitality, justice, fair wages, limits on greed, forgiveness of debts (the Jubilee tradition), and stewardship rather than absolute ownership.
Capitalism is criticized for greed and inequality. Socialism is criticized if it undermines freedom or personal responsibility. Communism is criticized when it abolishes religious liberty or concentrates power in the state.
If you compare the systems to the central ethical teachings of Jesus, democratic capitalism with strong moral and legal constraints has generally proved the most compatible with Christianity in practice because it preserves personal freedom, voluntary charity, and private responsibility while allowing room for churches and civil society. At the same time, Christianity consistently insists that markets must be restrained by justice, compassion, and concern for those left behind.
Christianity has never fully endorsed capitalism, socialism, or communism. Rather, it judges all of them by a higher standard: whether they help human beings love God and their neighbors, especially “the least of these.”