Like many Americans, President Donald Trump has an annual Super Bowl party. Unlike most Americans, the attendees of Trump’s party are interesting. In attendance this year at Trump’s party were the founders of the spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was busted for solicitation of prostitution.
In a bombshell report, the Miami Herald reveals:
Sometime during the party at Trump’s West Palm Beach country club, the president turned in his chair to look over his right shoulder, smiling for a photo with two women at a table behind him.
The woman who snapped the blurry Super Bowl selfie with the president was Li Yang, 45, a self-made entrepreneur from China who started a chain of Asian day spas in South Florida. Over the years, these establishments – many of which operate under the name Tokyo Day Spas – have gained a reputation for offering sexual services.
Less than three weeks after Trump’s Super Bowl party, the owner of the winning team was charged with soliciting prostitution at one of the spas founded by the two women.
It needs to be noted that Yang was not charged in the sting operation conducted by Florida officials. She no longer owns the spas and claims that she has no knowledge of sexual services being offered at the spas she founded. However, it should also be noted that Yang’s family still owns several South Florida spas that have provoked the interest of the authorities. That being said, no one, least of all me, is trying to implicate President Trump in last month’s sex-trafficking bust in South Florida. For my purposes, I’m writing about this because I am tired of fellow conservative Christians continuing to give our president a pass.
The saying “you’re known by the company you keep” has a companion Bible verse: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Proverbs 13:20).
It’s one thing to vote for a man like Donald Trump because the other options are even less palatable. It’s another thing altogether to continue to offer full-throated defenses of the president. Most notably, Liberty University’s president Jerry Falwell Jr. seems to believe that Trump can do no wrong; if he does, he gets a “mulligan,” to use Falwell’s word when describing the president’s extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels.
This matters for Christians because President Trump is known for being profane and being a philanderer — and for making his fortune in less than scrupulous ways, including the gambling industry that violates the Bible’s strictures against oppressing people. There is no way that Trump could be accused of modeling the fruit of the Spirit.
If it were simply that the president unwittingly found himself in a photo op with an excited citizen, that would be one thing. Based on the entirety of his life and the fact that he seems to collect unsavory characters around him — not to mention that the Super Bowl party wasn’t the first time the president and Li Yang have been photographed together — Proverbs 13:20, quoted above, has relevance.
In turn, this means that every time professing Christians like Jerry Falwell Jr. or those who will undoubtedly skewer me in the comment section, defend President Trump, the risk exists that the gospel of Jesus Christ is dragged into the pigsty of fools. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul told us that the world finds the gospel to be foolish. The reason Paul wrote those words is because he was encouraging the Christians in Corinth to make sure that their actions and words weren’t a stumbling block; the world is going to find the gospel foolish as it is. Christians shouldn’t give unbelievers reasons to scoff.
Defending President Donald Trump is a fool’s errand that the non-Christians see through. It’s a self-serving task born out of fear and not faith. Whatever good Trump accomplishes while in office will be in spite of his moral failings. Rejoice when God sees fit to work good through our president but stop defending him every time someone uncovers another unsavory action committed by the deeply immoral and unrepentant Donald Trump.
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