We’re losing an entire generation. We’re not just debating Trump’s soul here (though that thread could go on forever). We’re watching an entire generation decide the church isn’t credible.
Our pastor had a college-age daughter who recently stopped coming around. Gone. When he finally asked her why, she told him she couldn’t sit in a pew next to people who treated Trump like a prophet on Sunday and then turned around and told her generation they were ‘falling away’ for asking honest questions.
Kierkegaard beautifully says, "The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.’ He says we pretend not to understand it because the minute we do, we have to act accordingly.
This is toward Trump, obviously, but I also like to point out voters who project faith in him because it’s politically convenient. And also toward those of us who point at someone else’s spiritual deficiency, so we never have to examine our own.
I remembered hearing a pastor years ago talk about how the early church didn’t evaluate faith by someone’s verbal profession alone. They watched. They observed how a person treated the vulnerable, responded to correction, or showed humility in tough moments. The fruit was a pattern that emerged across seasons, not a single action or statement.
Not just to Trump but to many public figures who wore the Christian label, the tree and its fruit told a far more consistent story than any podium confession ever did. The times Trump spoke about faith, it always circled back to winning, strength, and personal greatness. It never landed on brokenness, need, or dependence on grace. Those weren’t the fruits that pointed toward a life shaped by the gospel. That didn’t mean I thought it was my place to issue some final verdict on his soul. Only God held that authority. But the passage existed precisely so that believers wouldn’t be naive. Jesus gave us that test for a reason, and ignoring it because the person in question happened to be politically useful felt like a far bigger compromise than most were willing to admit.