One of the recurring themes of this blog is the apparent lukewarmness of the Western church, the growing spiritual darkness of Western society, and the relationship between them. One way to explore this is to look at specific cultural and political examples through a Biblical lens — not primarily as political commentary, but as spiritual diagnosis.

Whatever one’s views of the current administration, it has done something revealing: it has brought certain patterns of darkness into the open. Behaviors that in previous eras were hidden, excused, or quietly tolerated in people’s hearts are now on full public display. And many of these behaviors are ones that Scripture specifically associates with Satan. That is worth paying attention to.

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, 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 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 (reportedly to the tune of billions of dollars), 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.

It is worth noting that none of these characteristics are new. Deception, greed, the manipulation of 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 of Western culture. For the church, the appropriate response is not partisan outrage but spiritual sobriety, renewed intercession, and a fresh reckoning with what it means to bear witness to a different Kingdom in a society that is showing its spiritual hand.