Speculation following the attempted assassination of former President Trump at the rally in Butler, PA, just 18 miles from Slippery Rock where I grew up, has given voice to a lot of bad theology. On one hand, there are folks who are claiming that the shooter missed his target because a guardian angel was watching over Mr. Trump – “The Lord was looking out for him!” some have said. Others have suggested that God had no role in it, but rather “the Devil protects his own.” Such comments share space with those who contend that a child being hit by a bus or a tree falling on someone’s house is “just God’s will.” Such theologies suggest that anything that happens – for good or bad – is controlled and caused by God. There are some inherent problems with attributing such disasters or rescues to God’s intervention and will. Most notably the concern is what such theologies suggest about the nature of God. What kind of loving God goes around hitting a child with a bus or causing the firefighter who was shot at the rally to die? Was God protecting Mr. Trump while killing the young firefighter and wounding the others around him? Adolph Hitler survived an assassination attempt; was God protecting him in order to perpetuate the slaughter in World War II? How can God be loving, merciful, and just while arbitrarily inflicting suffering on some while sparing others? It may rain “on the just and the unjust alike” but is God really choosing whose homes get washed away in the ensuing flood and whose are saved? Theologies that suggest a tug-of-war between God and Satan are no less helpful. Does God win the battle to save the child in the near disaster but lose it to the devil when the child is killed? Is all good attributable to God and all bad the work of Satan, and in whose eyes is the good and the bad to be judged? Some of the same folks who claimed that Trump was elected by the will of God in 2016 denied that Biden was elected by God’s will in 2020 – and vice versa. Who is wise enough to discern the will of God in those instances? In his book Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, Richard Carwardine quotes that great president as writing: “’In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.’ There followed, however, not a statement of Unionist certainty, but a startling hypothesis: ‘In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party…’” What Lincoln identifies is a caution to all of us about pretending to know the will of God. While we may not know God’s will with certainty, we do know that the Lord is a loving God, a God of mercy, grace, and justice, who does not go around arbitrarily inflicting suffering on God’s people. For some strange reason, God gave us free will which means sometimes people make bad decisions that cause others to suffer. Sometimes, as the story of Job points out, suffering is undeserved – “bad things happen to good people.” God does not promise that there will not be disasters or troubles, floods or fires, shootings or valiant rescues. But God does promise to be with us through it all – through thick and thin, good and bad, triumph and tragedy. So be cautious of attributing to God or the devil the outcome of any event. It may or may not be God’s will. But strive instead to live as God calls you to live – to bend your will to the will of God which is perhaps summed up best by the prophet Micah: What does the Lord require of you? Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
– John Peterson
