Our leaders have built a Second Eden. The Epstein files secrecy is pure, obvious evidence of this.
The garden is walled not by divine decree, but by bureaucratic classification and redaction ink. Inside, this administration guards its own Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Epstein files, the classified JFK documents, the suppressed reports of our own history. These are not just data. They are our Forbidden Knowledge.
And the executive branch, acting as a false god, has forbidden us to eat.
Moreover, those in power, and their defenders within their elite, pro-authoritarian status in the administration, tell us that this knowledge is not for us. They claim that its consumption will only bring chaos, that we cannot handle the truth, and that we must remain in a state of protected ignorance, ethically immature.
This is not a political failure or a simple lack of transparency. Ultimately, the Epstein files secrecy is a profound spiritual crime.
The Idolatry of Concealment
In the Hebrew scriptures, one proverb offers a sharp political distinction: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2).
This text is a divine job description. God’s role is to possess ultimate knowledge. In contrast, the role of the human ruler (the “king”) is not to mimic God by hoarding knowledge, but to serve the public by investigating it.
When any administration, including this one, chooses to conceal matters of profound public interest, it commits a theological transgression. It usurps the role of the Divine. Consequently, it ceases to be a government of “kings” searching for truth and becomes an idol, demanding we trust its hidden wisdom over our own right to reason.
This is the very definition of idolatry: a human institution placing itself in the role of God, demanding worship in the form of blind obedience.
A simpler, more fundamental crime compounds this idolatry: theft. The truth of our history is not the administration’s property to own; it is the public’s property to possess. It is the spiritual inheritance required to assess our reality, to judge our leaders, and to participate in a free society. By locking these files away, the President is stealing the public’s moral property.
The Curse of Hebel
This sin comes with a theological consequence: a curse. Specifically, the curse of secrecy is the death of civic trust.
As I’ve explored extensively in my work on Ecclesiastes, the most terrifying state of human existence is hebel (הֶבֶל). The word defies a single English translation. It is at once the futility, the absurdity, and the cold meaninglessness of a life built on. Hebel is not just “vanity.” It is the state of living in a world where your actions have no connection to outcomes, where truth is unknowable, and where all effort is a “chasing after wind.”
By withholding the substance of our own history, the current administration curses the public with perpetual hebel.
It creates a civic vacuum where all narratives become equally plausible because the official one is untrustworthy. Consequently, conspiracies thrive not because the public is foolish, but because the government compels them to. When our leaders hoard the light, the public is forced to live in the shadows, grasping at whispers. This is the futility of modern civic life: the government asks us to vote, to participate, and to trust, all while being told that the fundamental facts of our own reality are not for us to know.
The Hypocrisy of Power
The temptation to play God is the core temptation of power itself. It is a structural sin, not a partisan one.
But principles are meaningless unless we apply them with symmetrical force, especially to those we support. For example, for years, we watched politicians on the left suppress truths to protect their own. Now, we are watching politicians on the right, led by President Trump, do the exact same thing.
This is not a neutral, abstract failure of the state. Rather, it is a specific, active choice by the current executive branch to protect the powerful over the public. An attempt to silence the victims while elevating the abusers.
For an administration and a political movement that claims to be a populist firewall against a corrupt “deep state,” this act of concealment is a staggering work of hypocrisy. It proves the populist rhetoric was always hollow. Indeed, it is a tribal betrayal of its own stated values.
To condemn secrecy in your enemies while practicing it yourself is the final act of moral corruption.
The Moral Mandate
The release of the Epstein files, and all files like them, is not a matter of political convenience. It is a moral obligation. It is not a request; it is an ethical mandate. A real mandate, not the mythical one proclaimed in the last election.
We do not need the President to “protect” us from the truth. We need the truth to protect us from the powerful (including him).
Mr. President, this is the very sin you built a movement condemning. To now engage in the same secrecy you relentlessly diminished your 2016 opponent for is the ultimate act of political hypocrisy. Truly, it proves the critiques were never about principle, only about power.
Any administration that chooses to protect its own reputation, or the reputations of its allies, over the spiritual integrity and moral right-to-knowledge of its people stands condemned. It has failed its primary duty as “king” and has become an idol.
And the first step in tearing down an idol is to expose it to the light.