It is said that actions speak louder than words, and Jesus made this clear when He taught that people could be known by their fruit. This is a sobering observation to make about the current administration, because many of its actions align with those that are associated with Satan in the Bible. If we are taught to look for the fruits of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control – but our leaders exhibit different fruits – death, fear, lying, and greed – what does that say about the spirit behind them?
Consider these examples:
Satan is described as one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy — an agent of death (John 10:10, Hebrews 2:14–15). While every administration has made decisions that resulted in loss of life, the scale and nature of recent policy changes have provoked widespread public outcry for their apparent needlessness and avoidability. Cuts to PEPFAR funding have resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Extrajudicial executions of alleged “narcoterrorists” have proceeded without due process. Blatant calls for the assassination of foreign leaders have been made publicly. High-pressure immigration policies have contributed to the deaths of innocent people. And cuts of over 90% to the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office — made just before airstrikes killed nearly 200 civilian children — reflect a stunning disregard for human life. Unprecedented, avoidable death has become a defining feature of this administration.
Scripture is clear that the spirit we have received is not one of fear (2 Timothy 1:7), and that perfect love drives fear out (1 John 4:18). Satan, by contrast, uses fear of death and loss to manipulate and control (Hebrews 2:15). The current administration has made fear a primary instrument of governance: threatening to cut funding unless DEI programs are eliminated, issuing military threats against sovereign nations to impose its agenda, pressuring media companies with the threat of blocked mergers, threatening political opponents with unwarranted prosecution, and moving to revoke broadcast licenses of outlets that report unfavorably. The consistent pattern is coercion through intimidation.
Jesus identified Satan as “the father of lies” and said that there is no truth in him (John 8:44). The current administration has become widely associated with a willingness to state things that are demonstrably false — a pattern so consistent that it has been systematically documented by multiple independent fact-checking organizations, and there is even a Wikipedia page devoted to Trump’s false statements. This is not ordinary political spin. It is a settled disposition toward falsehood.
Paul calls greed a form of idolatry (Colossians 3:5, Ephesians 5:5) — the worship of wealth in place of God. The current president has openly described himself as greedy, and his conduct has borne that out: leveraging his position for personal financial gain through the cryptocurrency market, accepting extravagant gifts from foreign entities, and pursuing displays of opulence such as the lavish redecorating of the Oval Office and the demolition of a historically significant portion of the White House to construct a ballroom.
None of these characteristics are new, of course. Deception, greed, manipulation through fear, disregard for human life — these have always been present in human governance, and in human hearts. What is different now is the scale and the openness. These things are no longer hidden or carefully managed. They are displayed, even celebrated. In that sense, the current moment may be spiritually instructive: not merely as a political crisis, but as a kind of revelation — an unveiling of forces that have long been at work beneath the surface.
In addition to the tactics themselves, many associate the current administration with God – claiming that Trump is doing God’s will in the things that he is accomplishing. However, God does not work this way. These are not the tactics of the Holy Spirit, and claiming that they are is a form of blasphemy – speaking lies about God. The church today needs to be very clear about this, and let people know that these tactics do not represent the fruit of the Holy Spirit, but of the spirit of Satan.
(Note : This is a modified version of my previous post, used for sharing in a particular context.)
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