As a Midwesterner who grew up in the Catholic faith, I was fairly certain by the time I was ten years old that I was going to Hell. The assessment was based on my own fatalistic tendencies (fully ingrained even by the tender age of ten), a brand of bleak acquiescence about one’s station that is familiar to those who grow up in certain corners of the Midwest, and most importantly, an inability to obtain a definitive answer to the question of what God demands of us. When the consequence for misinterpreting God’s will is eternal damnation, one longs for certainty and specificity. The Church offers many things; certainty and specificity are not among them.
I was told that God loved me, but that didn’t square with the vengeful being presented in the Old Testament. And the New Testament’s central takeaway—that God killed his son to save humanity—felt needlessly cruel considering that an omniscient being’s options for doing anything, including redeeming a people, are limitless. From Genesis onward, God never seemed to lack for big ideas, but they often seemed to ooze sadism. Overall, God’s message of love always struck me as not that dissimilar from the impassioned, manipulative tirade a violent alcoholic would spew right after kidnapping his own kid at gunpoint: “I don’t want to hurt you, so do what I say and everything will be okay. This is for your own good—you know I love you, right?”
Conflicting answers to my questions about what a mercurial and violent God demands led me to conclude that salvation for anyone is slim—myself included. But presuming you’re doomed in the next life doesn’t entitle you to be a total pill in this one. My parents were adamant that empathy was strength and that one should strive to embrace even those who would do you harm. This was not a platitude they espoused; this was a value they expressed through deeds. And while I have sometimes faltered in following their example, fantastically so in some instances, I have done my damnedest to make empathy central to my moral identity. To love thine enemy is the one Christian tenet I embraced as much as a mortal of limited vision can. My capacity for empathy was evidence that salvation was not beyond my reach. But that was before the election of Donald J. Trump exposed me for who I truly am.
Donald Trump is a vile human being: willfully ignorant, racist, dishonest, arrogant, violent—a living caricature of the “ugly American.” I hate him. For those who see him as I do, that hatred is understandable. It is a forgivable sin. But the other hatred I harbor is more damning—one that should not be expressed in polite company: I hate Trump supporters. In my heart of hearts, I believe they deserve all the scorn and contempt one can bring to bear.
Many on the left have wrung their hands and asked that we extend empathy to Trump supporters, work to understand their frustrations, and seek common purpose. It is a wonderful position. It is the correct one, and I desperately want to share it. But I do not. I am too angry to extend my hand to those who used their democratic vote—a vote that countless people have bled and died to preserve—to elevate to the presidency a dangerous narcissist who has absolutely no respect for our democratic system of government. What common purpose can I hope to share with people who knowingly embraced a man whose campaign was predicated on exploiting fear and stoking racial hatred? How can one reach a place of understanding when objective reality itself is massaged to align with one’s suspicions and prejudices?
Throughout my life, I have forgiven many people for a variety of abuses to which they subjected me. I did this because it was a step on the road to healing, because I have been forgiven for my many transgressions despite my not being worthy of forgiveness, and because it was the Christian thing to do. I thought my capacity for forgiveness was almost boundless, and I patted myself on the back for my own magnanimity. These past several months have revealed just how dark my impulses can be, for in my heart of hearts I believe that if every Trump voter fell off the face of the Earth tomorrow, the world would be a far better place. It is an ugly judgement to render, morally reprehensible and counterproductive to the cause of progress, but I can’t shake loose from it. Blind hatred has so consumed me that I now share with Trump’s most ardent supporters a quality within them that I have vociferously condemned: a weakness of spirit that allows fear to overwhelm rationality and that encourages the justification of the indefensible—the dehumanization of the other. It is also proof that my capacity for empathy was little more than a mirage, a conception of myself that I gazed upon with self-congratulatory awe but that disappeared the moment its need was paramount. Now I am confronted by a horrific realization: I will not burn because God is a cruel being; I will burn because I am a cruel being. I will burn because I deserve to burn.
At least my damnation won’t come as a surprise. My guess is that many of Trump’s supporters, especially of the white Evangelical variety, will be shocked to find themselves condemned to eternal suffering. While I would never presume to know what God or his son wants, I can’t imagine that Jesus, an impoverished religious minority with brown skin, would be fond of those who elevated to power a man quite vocal in his contempt for the impoverished, religious minorities, and people with brown skin. That said, I doubt that self-righteous liberal elitists will occupy the same circle of Hell as racist authoritarian enablers, which in a certain respect is a shame. Even in Hell, bound by the same tortuous existence and screaming the same desperate pleas for forgiveness that will forever go unanswered, I and those Trump voters I so greatly despise will remain worlds apart, never able to empathize with the other’s fear and pain.
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