For people of faith, it’s time to be counted. We face a fragile future in time of Trump

Open your eyes. American democracy is on life support, and the president and his enablers — who are both a cause and a symptom of this grave condition — are eager to pull the plug. This is the time for Americans of good will to come together and live by what Abraham Lincoln called “our better angels.” Or, as the Talmud teaches: “The day is short and the task is great. ... If not now, when?”

We can all draw upon our country’s highest ideals of liberty and equality, even if many of them remain far from fully realized. If you, like me, come from a faith community, this is the critical moment to stand up for the core virtues that your tradition holds sacred.

Consider the classic passage from the Ten Commandments: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Contrary to a common misreading, this is not about uttering profanities that mix the word “God” with some other phrase. To take God’s name in vain is to do something inestimably worse. The true transgression is to employ religion — which should call us to holiness — to instead advance the cause of evil. We make a mockery of the Holy One’s name when we use it to destroy the very values we’re implored to follow.

A little over a week ago, Donald Trump provided a textbook example of this grievous sin, sending the United States military to attack unarmed, peaceful protesters so that he might enjoy a photo op in front of a church that wanted nothing to do with him and his divisive bigotry. As Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., later told those who inquired: “He used violent means to ask to be escorted across the park into the courtyard of the church. He held up his Bible after speaking [an] inflammatory militarized approach to the wounds of our nation. He did not pray. He did not offer a word of balm or condolence to those who are grieving. He did not seek to unify the country, but rather he used our symbols and our sacred space as a way to reinforce a message that is antithetical to everything that the person of Jesus, whom we follow, and the gospel texts that we strive to emulate ... represent.”

Nor did the president read from that Bible. He did not even open it — lest he encounter the words of Deuteronomy demanding “Justice, justice, you shall pursue,” or the repeated prophetic judgment upon nations that fail to treat their most vulnerable citizens as full human beings.

If the president had cracked just the first page, from the opening chapter of Genesis, he might have read how “God created humanity in the Divine image.” All of humanity, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. People of every creed, and of none.

And people of every race. All formed in God’s likeness, all equally beloved.

For those who truly believe and practice this still-radical biblical teaching, it would be inconceivable to keep your knee on a black man’s neck while he cries out, “I can’t breathe,” until he lies dead in the street. It would be patently obvious to you that his life — like that of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and so, so many more — is of utmost sanctity. To take God’s word to heart is to know that we are all precious children.

If you heed the wisdom of Genesis — or its echoes in the still unfulfilled words of our nation’s founders — you don’t call upon America’s armed forces to attack peaceful protesters. You stand with them in their courageous insistence that Black Lives Matter.

We can, and must, do better. In the absence of justice, there can be no peace. We, the people, now hold the fragile, uncertain future of our nation in our weary yet still-capable hands.

God help us. I pray we prove worthy of that sacred responsibility.