I was named after a man who carried his faith beyond the football field. The name itself carries a question for every ruler who mistakes praise for divinity.
By Michael Smith — Reflective MVS
My father named me after his cousin, Michael Cobb.
Cobb came out of Youngstown, played tight end at Michigan State, and entered the NFL as a first-round selection in the 1977 draft. After one season with the Cincinnati Bengals, he joined the Chicago Bears, where he played from 1978 through 1981, the year I was born.
Later, he carried his Christian faith into schools and communities through Sports World. His years in professional football gave him an audience, but he used that audience to speak with young people about character, responsibility, choices, and hope.
That is the man whose name my father gave me.
The name, however, reaches much farther back than Youngstown, Michigan State, or Soldier Field.
Michael comes from the Hebrew Mikha’el.
It means:
Who is like God?
Not “Michael is like God.”
Not “Michael has been appointed God’s regional manager.”
Not “Michael should start pricing halos.”
The name is a rhetorical question, and the answer is embedded in it:
No one.
Its roots translate roughly into who, like, and God. It is not a declaration of greatness. It is a restraint against vanity. A rebuke to every king, warrior, preacher, athlete, billionaire, and president tempted to believe that power has made him sacred.
The question is ancient.
The appetite behind it is painfully current.
Because no American political figure has spent more time answering “Who is like God?” by eagerly raising his own hand than Donald Trump.
A Name That Denies the Throne
The longer I have considered the meaning of my name, the more I have come to respect the tension inside it.
Michael Cobb reached the NFL, a degree of fame and achievement most athletes never touch. He stood beneath stadium lights, heard crowds roar, and experienced the kind of public recognition that can persuade a man that the spotlight belongs to him by natural law.
Yet his later work pointed beyond his own résumé.
Football gave him the microphone. It did not become the sermon.
That is a distinction Donald Trump seems constitutionally unable to grasp.
Trump does not merely use a platform.
He becomes the platform.
He does not enter an institution and honor its purpose. He scans the walls for an empty patch where his name might fit.
He does not wish to participate in history. He wants history to skip the deliberations, cancel the background check, and hand him the trophy while he is still available for photographs.
Presidents have always possessed egos. Nobody campaigns across fifty states because he longs for anonymity. Political ambition is rarely a monastery.
Trump’s appetite, however, exceeds ordinary vanity.
He does not merely crave approval.
He covets reverence.
And in April 2026, the symbolism abandoned subtlety altogether.
The AI Messiah
Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed in white, bathed in celestial light, placing a glowing hand upon the head of a sick man.
The picture was not merely complimentary. It borrowed openly from centuries of Christian artwork depicting Christ as healer. Trump appeared luminous and otherworldly, surrounded by patriotic ornament while restorative power seemed to radiate from his fingertips.
This was not a campaign portrait.
It was a digital holy card.
After religious conservatives joined the public backlash, Trump deleted the image. He then claimed it did not portray him as Jesus. According to Trump, he was merely shown as a doctor “making people better.”
A doctor.
Naturally.
Because ordinary physicians routinely conduct hospital rounds in radiant white robes, dispensing heavenly light from their palms while fighter jets and bald eagles decorate the firmament.
Apparently, medical school has become much more theatrical.
An art historian interviewed by Reuters observed that the image drew from a long Christian tradition portraying Christ as healer. Even prominent Trump supporters called the post blasphemous and suggested that a touch of humility might improve the presentation.
Trump, unsurprisingly, was not finished.
Days later, he reposted another AI-generated image showing Jesus embracing him before an American flag. Trump stood behind a microphone while Jesus pressed His face against Trump’s, as though the Son of God had stopped by the rally to deliver a personal endorsement between speakers.
The original caption suggested that God might be playing His “Trump card.” Trump added that his critics might dislike the picture, but he considered it “quite nice.”
The sequence tells its own story.
First, Trump appeared as the healer.
Then Jesus appeared as Trump’s supporter.
Christ moved from the center of the faith to a flattering member of the campaign entourage.
That is not merely clumsy religious symbolism. It is the visual grammar of substitution.
And it returns me to the question carried inside my name:
Who is like God?
Trump’s social media operation appears to have replied:
“Give us a few minutes with the image generator.”
From Hijacking Jesus to Replacing Him
I have been circling this problem for years.
In my earlier Reflective MVS article, Christianity Hijacked: The Right-Wing’s Hostile Takeover, I examined how Christian nationalism converted faith into a political weapon.
The bargain was already plain.
Christian imagery would supply moral cover for political power. Political power, in return, would enforce a constricted form of Christianity built less upon mercy, humility, justice, and grace than upon domination, punishment, and cultural control.
Jesus would be wrapped in the flag and instructed to endorse whatever arrived from party headquarters.
Border raids.
Book bans.
Voter suppression.
Tax relief for the wealthy.
Hostility toward immigrants.
Cruelty marketed as courage.
The teachings could be discarded so long as the trademarks remained visible.
Then, in The Script Has Flipped: From Hijacking Jesus to Replacing Him, I argued that the movement had entered a more grotesque phase.
Trump was no longer being presented merely as a flawed instrument whom God might use.
He was becoming the healer.
The savior.
The persecuted redeemer.
The chosen man standing alone between civilization and the abyss.
Jesus could remain in the frame, provided He understood that Trump had top billing.
The AI images simply made visible what the political movement had already begun practicing.
They were not harmless internet nonsense, though nonsense was certainly present.
They were political theology rendered in pixels, with Trump cast simultaneously as savior, martyr, and spectacle.
When Praise Hardens Into Doctrine
Trump’s defenders often accuse critics of overstating the religious dimension.
The pictures are jokes, they insist.
Memes.
Entertainment.
A little trolling aimed at humorless liberals who take everything too seriously.
But political idolatry rarely knocks on the door and introduces itself by name.
It arrives disguised as loyalty.
It calls itself patriotism.
It recasts scrutiny as persecution.
It turns one man’s impulses into the movement’s moral compass.
Then, when the imagery becomes embarrassingly obvious, it tells everyone to relax and enjoy the joke.
The issue is not merely that Trump posts absurd AI artwork.
The issue is the political culture prepared to receive it as something more than absurd.
A 2025 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 67 percent of respondents classified as Christian-nationalist adherents believed God had ordained Trump to win the 2024 presidential election. Nearly half of those classified as sympathizers said the same.
That conviction alters the relationship between citizen and ruler.
A president elected by the public may be criticized.
A leader appointed by God becomes far more difficult to question.
Political opposition ceases to be disagreement. It becomes rebellion against divine order.
An investigation becomes persecution.
An electoral loss becomes inconceivable unless sinister forces engineered it.
A court ruling becomes illegitimate whenever it restrains the chosen man.
Cruelty becomes defensible because the leader is supposedly fighting evil.
Loyalty becomes righteousness.
The movement stops evaluating the man and begins guarding the mythology.
Trump need not proclaim himself divine. His political culture performs the liturgical labor for him.
It constructs the altar.
It manufactures the icons.
It interprets every failure as sabotage and every victory as prophecy.
Then Trump walks into the sacred light and complains that the lighting is unflattering.
Faith Is Not Flattery
There is a reason humility occupies such an important place in religion.
Faith is supposed to impose boundaries upon the human ego.
It tells the wealthy that money cannot purchase righteousness.
It tells rulers that authority does not confer holiness.
It tells preachers that the pulpit belongs to the message, not the messenger.
It reminds all of us that creation did not begin as a personal branding exercise.
That is what gives the name Michael its force.
Who is like God?
The question does not flatter the person carrying it.
It disciplines him.
It says:
You are not the highest authority in the room.
Your accomplishments do not make you sacred.
Your followers do not render you infallible.
Your suffering does not automatically make you Christ.
Your enemies do not instantly become demons.
Your victory does not prove that heaven endorsed your campaign.
That is the inverse of Trumpism.
Trumpism takes every spiritual warning against pride and converts it into merchandise.
Blessed are the humble becomes blessed are the winners.
Love your enemies becomes crush your enemies before they crush you.
Welcome the stranger becomes build the wall.
The last shall be first becomes the wealthy deserve another tax cut.
Take up your cross becomes purchase the limited-edition sneakers.
The Sermon on the Mount has been replaced by a rally speech with better parking and a gift shop.
The Man and the Message
The connection to Michael Cobb makes the contrast more personal.
He played professional football. He stood before enormous crowds. He understood what it felt like to be cheered, recognized, and admired.
Then he used that history to direct attention toward something beyond himself.
His athletic career opened doors, but the purpose was never to persuade children that Michael Cobb occupied the center of the universe.
That is what a platform should do.
It allows a person to carry a message farther than he could carry it alone.
Trump reverses the arrangement.
The presidency, the flag, Christianity, the military, the monuments, the media, and even Jesus become scenery in the continuing production of Donald Trump.
Nothing may remain larger than he is.
Not the office.
Not the nation.
Not the faith.
Certainly not the facts.
Every institution becomes another frame around the portrait.
Every ceremony becomes an awards banquet.
Every prayer becomes another chance to place his name near God’s.
That is why the AI images matter.
They did not invent the idolatry.
They exposed it.
Democracy Demands Another Answer
“Who is like God?” is a theological question, but it contains a democratic principle:
No ruler is sacred.
No president stands beyond criticism.
No political leader is owed unconditional obedience because he won an election.
No officeholder becomes morally pure because his supporters have confused electoral success with divine intervention.
The American system, at least in theory, was built upon suspicion of human fallibility. Power was divided because no individual should be trusted with all of it. Terms were limited because authority should not become permanent. Elections exist because rulers must answer to the governed.
Democracy assumes that the leader may be wrong.
Political idolatry assumes that the leader cannot be wrong.
Those two propositions cannot inhabit the same government indefinitely without one devouring the other.
Once a president becomes the chosen one, constitutional restraints begin to resemble sabotage.
Courts become enemies.
Journalists become traitors.
Opposition parties become threats to the nation.
Citizens who refuse to applaud become objects of suspicion.
That is how republics acquire royal habits while swearing nobody has ordered a crown.
My Name Is Not a Crown
My father named me after Michael Cobb.
That is a family inheritance I carry with pride.
But the meaning beneath the name gives me something weightier than pride.
It gives me a warning.
Michael is not the answer.
Michael is the question.
Who is like God?
Not the football player.
Not the preacher.
Not the writer.
Not the billionaire.
Not the president.
Not Donald Trump, regardless of how many artificial halos are generated, how many preachers declare him chosen, how many supporters treat criticism as blasphemy, or how many flattering portraits place Jesus just behind his shoulder.
The answer remains what it has always been:
No one.
Trump may collect applause.
He may surround himself with courtiers.
He may post himself as the healer, then call it medicine when people notice the robes.
He may turn Jesus into a rally guest and the American flag into an altar cloth.
He may continue raising his hand.
The answer does not change.
Who is like God?
Not him.
And in a democracy, we had better remain free enough, brave enough, and clear-eyed enough to say so.
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