Denison Forum

Donald Trump, TikTok, and the Influence of Leadership

TikTok went offline Saturday night after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law requiring its Chinese owner to sell the app by Sunday or face a ban. Then, after President-elect Trump said he would issue an executive order today to delay the ban, the company began restoring service. This is just one example of the power to be conferred on Mr. Trump when he takes the oath of office at noon today (EST) as our nation’s forty-seventh president.

“Everyone Needs to Feel We Can Come Back”

Acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan spoke for many when she wrote:

People need hope. Five years of the pandemic, its aftermath and angers, of cultural furies, of inflation and endless politics—people feel beat, like they were through something bad and still aren’t sure what it was. Young men and women need to feel, as they enter American history, that they’re part of something rising, not falling. The latent optimism the young always feel—they need to know it’s grounded in something real. Everyone needs to feel we can come back, turn it around, light the world, be the beacon again.

Psychologist Dan J. Tomasulo reports that hope is vital to better physical and mental well-being, noting that hopeful people tend to live longer and happier lives with “passion and zest that fuels their energy.” His article advises that the secret to hope is “focusing on what you can control.”

In his 1993 inaugural address, Bill Clinton similarly asserted, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”

However, Albert Einstein reportedly said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”

Which is right?

What We Need “More Than Anything Else in the World”

In The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner observed:

When it comes to putting broken lives back together—when it comes, in religious terms, to the saving of souls—the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best. To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you, that is more wonderful still.
The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed also secures your life against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life comes from.

He adds:

Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye, because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift. He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from [God] himself, a helping hand.

In light of the unprecedented challenges we face, our nation’s ultimate hope is in the God whose help we need most. You and I can, therefore, love America best by praying and working for Americans to love and trust our Lord and thus be empowered to love and serve each other (Matthew 22:37–39).

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, many of his brilliant quotes will be cited by writers such as myself. Here’s one of my favorites: In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. King stated,

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

But he knew what we need to remember: “unarmed truth” and “unconditional love” must come from the only One who is “the truth” (John 14:6) and whose very nature “is love” (1 John 4:8).

The President of Three Meters

Only one American is president of the nation. Few of us have the power to guide our cultural future. How can you and I be conveyors of the hope our country needs?

Meik Wiking, who leads the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, cites the importance of trusting employees as vital to workers’ happiness. He uses the example of staff at the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen, where they follow the three-meter rule: you are CEO of everything within a radius of three meters. If you see trash within your three-meter radius, you pick it up. If you see a guest looking for something, you stop and ask if you can help.

You and I are president of the three meters around us.

Will you serve well today?