Thank God?

The former President credits God for saving him from the assassin’s bullet, claiming, “God was on my side.” It might surprise a few to know that I actually agree and I, along with so many others, thank God that he was not killed that day.

No, I have not had a sudden conversion to the MAGA religion. (That is what it has become.) I previously believed that nothing could be worse for democracy than the election of the MAGA leader. I was wrong. His assassination would have been worse than his election and likely only the beginning of a wave of political violence that would tear this country apart, especially when you think of all those assault-style weapons in the hands of less than reasonable people.

So yes, God was on his side in that moment, just as God was also on the side of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Gabby Giffords, Ronald Reagan and every other victim of an assassination attempt. Reagan, Giffords and now Trump fortunately survived. In what theological universe does it makes sense that God protected the latter three and not the other three?

It is of course an entirely different thing to claim God is on the side of a victim of violence than to claim that God saved someone from that violence. I can believe the latter if by that claim you mean that a person’s faith enabled them to rise above the violence or maybe someone’s conscience stirred them to intervene to stop a violent act. However, to suggest that God physically altered the path of a high-velocity bullet to protect Trump and apparently did not alter the path of the bullet that struck and killed Corey Comperatore, is absurd. I honestly do not know how anyone could believe in such a God who chooses one over the other, as if this life is worth saving but that one is not. In seminary the theological term I learned for such thinking is “scatology”, more commonly known as “bullsh**”.

For anyone paying attention to history and especially for people of Jewish and Christian heritage, the notion that God intervenes physically to save people from violence died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. This realization came to me when I was at Auschwitz myself 35 years after those chambers of death were destroyed. Sitting with a group of 60 German young adults seeking to come to terms with what their country had done in the Holocaust, one of the group leaders read the story told by Elie Wiesel in the concentration camp. Three inmates had been caught trying to escape. To make an example of them, the Nazis hung them in the camp square and forced everyone else to watch. Two of the men died quickly, but the third was a but a young boy. Not being as heavy as the others, his neck did not break when he was hung and he struggled for what seemed like an eternity as the horrified crowd watched. Someone in front of Wiesel cried out, “Where, oh where, is God?” A voice inside of Wiesel responded, “God is there, hanging from the gallows.”

In 1998 when my mother was stabbed to death by her deranged nephew here in Eugene, a few tried to comfort me by saying that it must have been God’s will. I was not comforted. I did find a bit of comfort in Wiesel’s story and the story told to me by the Sheriff at the scene that night of the pesky little dog guarding Mom’s body. The dog was a Lhasa Apso and his name was Wicket. After spending time with my newborn daughter several years before, Mom felt the need for something to cuddle. Wicket was the answer and Mom loved the little bugger dearly. When I learned about Wicket, covered in Mom’s blood, I knew that God had not abandoned her in that horrible moment, but was there, by her side.

So yes, I have no difficulty believing that God was at Trump’s side in that moment just as I also believe God was present in the actions of the Secret Service to protect him and in all those who rendered aid to Mr. Comperatore and the other victims of the shooting. I can also imagine God working on the conscience of the shooter, trying to persuade him to not pull that trigger. But ask me to believe that God chose to save Trump’s life and not Mr. Comperatore’s, let alone the victims of the Holocaust and other genocieds, the 1143 victims of the Hamas raid in Israel and the 30,000+ victims of the war in Gaza, or the life of my mother, is to ask me to either hate God or to believe theological nonsense.

Maybe credit should be given to the officer who caused the shooter to hurry his shot, or maybe the rifle team that did not give him the opportunity to improve his skill, but do not claim God intervened to save the life of Donald Trump, otherwise you make a mockery of all the innocent lives not saved by God throughout history and you create a false image of a partisan God who listens only to prayers of one particular group. Thank God for good fortune, sing “God Bless America”, but please don’t make claims for God that many good believers and non-believers alike find offensive or herectical. Or as I choose to call it, scatology.