Confession/Admission: I’ve always been a bit of a misanthrope, suspicious of my fellow human beings, and sometimes just downright untrusting and disliking of them. When I completed my required-for-ordination unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston way back in the summer of 1991, trust was the biggest issue that my supervisor highlighted. I needed to work on my trust issues, she informed me. It continues to be a struggle, especially since there’s so much that feeds (legitimately, I believe, at least at times) my tendencies to be suspicious of others, and to generally not like many of them (or worse, as in the case with some prominent public figures).

For my entire adulthood and most of my youth, I have perceived my faith as a counterbalance to my natural inclinations toward misanthropy. Jesus encourages me to see people differently, to see each person as a child of God. And that I have tried to do. Jesus has taught me to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength, and my neighbor as myself. Helpfully, some wise person noted that Jesus taught that we must love our neighbors and that loving is different from liking. This, I have also endeavored to follow and to allow that teaching, that commandment, to inform how I live my life.

But, now I’m struggling more than ever, as we approach January 20, 2025 and Inauguration Day (my daughter’s friends are calling it Innauseation Day), the swearing in as president a man I loathe— a convicted felon, a misogynist, a person who revels in name-calling and other forms of excessive meanness, a man willing to encourage an insurrection when he didn’t get his way, a man who appears to believe that he’s never made a mistake. These are not my opinions. They are all backed up with video, audio, and various forms of social media, many items posted by the man himself.

I am not only wresting with the loathing I feel for the incoming president, but there’s also a fair amount of loathing directed at my fellow Americans, for this time the president assumes office not because of the strange ways of the Electoral College, but with the popular vote. Grasping at feeble strands of comfort, I find a bit of solace in living in a blue state. Sure, Maine might be only barely blue, but: a. It is blue (for now, at least, although Trump won the county in which I live), and, b. I am surrounded by a lot of blue, living in the Northeast, with other (mostly) states/people who are not drawn in by name-calling, meanness, misogyny, and the demonizing of others. Still, there are plenty of Trump voters around and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to tone down the deep feelings of anger, suspicion and bitterness I feel toward them.

I find myself in territory where it’s hard for me to know how to be, what to do, etc. There are so many misanthropic thoughts floating around in my head as we approach The Day, next Monday. And, to complicate things still further is that I serve as a pastor and teacher of a small church where people turn to me for guidance. How do I grapple with my loathing for Mr. Trump, Trump voters and worse still, Trump enthusiasts, in the midst of a community of faith, a church in which we are taught to love God AND neighbor, when the loving, but not necessarily liking, isn’t really working?

In the past, when an Inauguration Day loomed that involved the swearing in of a president for whom I didn’t vote, there’s been plenty of dislike and disgust. This time is different in that the misanthropy that is rising to the surface, that I’m trying to beat back each and every day, involves so many more people. It’s not simply that I share community with people with whom I disagree (after all, I live in a household with at least one person who usually votes differently than I do). Now it feels like there’s a deep and wide gulf in how we perceive and appreciate basic human values.

Shortly after the election, there was an especially poignant essay published by the New York Times, written by Naomi Beinart, “I’m 16. On Nov.6 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft” (11/16/24). Despite the gap in our ages, I felt a kinship to the woes Ms. Beinart expressed: “We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman. Where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President.” That half of the country finds this man fit to lead the country, while the other half believes (and knows, given the easily available evidence) that he should be in prison, or at least shunned because of his views on just about every group and every person who doesn’t look like him or have the same sort of body parts, feels profoundly alienating and disturbing.

I may very well find a way to avoid the ceremony of Innauseation Day, but there will be lots of days after that and I can’t avoid all of them. My life and my profession won’t allow that. Will my faith continue to serve as a counterbalance to my misanthropy or will the weight of attitudes and actions by the incoming administration, buoyed by its supporters and devotees, be too much for my faith to bear?

Help me, Jesus, help me.