Reflections on the Bible, Jay-Z and Trump: Can mixing politics and religion work for the culture?

Recently, I’ve been haunted by the number 444.

This month in my Saturday improv class, I noticed 444 tattooed on a classmate’s arm. At my desk the next week, I felt compelled to check my phone, and it was 4:44. Twice that same week I woke up at precisely 4:44 a.m.

Perplexed by this pattern, I turned to Claude (AI) and asked him to list every mention of chapter 4, verse 44 in the Bible. I need my sleep, so if God was trying to tell me something, I wanted to know sooner rather than later.

Two passages jumped out at me: Daniel 4:44 and Luke 4:44. In Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar is warned in a dream that he will be cast out to live like a beast “until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth.” And in Luke, as Jesus begins his ministry, he is called to preach throughout Galilee because, as he declared earlier in the chapter, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.”

Reflecting, I saw important parallels to what God is requiring of me in the workplace and what’s happening in our current political and cultural moment. In social impact organizations across the country — especially those providing educational service — leaders are grappling with how to sustain and deepen their commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the midst of the ongoing political assault on our work.

Like Nebuchadnezzar, too many of our leaders — exemplified by former President Donald Trump — are puffed up with pride and drunk on power. They sow division, lift up the privileged and cast out the marginalized. Even as he literally hawks Bibles, Trump’s politics preach discord and oppression rather than the love and inclusion modeled by Christ.