Dear Friends,
From my planned essay/homily for this week, I quickly pivoted in light of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Because of the immediacy of events and my personal work schedule, I am publishing the podcast a day early, which I prayerfully submit for your consideration.
Let us all be in prayer for the safety and protection of both candidates for the president of the United States, and let us freely exercise our right to give thanks and praise as those prayers are answered.
May God’s protection and blessing be upon all of you. You are loved!
Pressing On,
D. Paul
DID GOD PROTECT DONALD TRUMP?
The Prayers of the People:
Father, we give you thanks and praise for your hand of protection upon the former president and current republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. May you continue to shield him against all those who would do him harm. Lord, hear our prayer.
Father, we give you thanks and praise for your hand of protection upon presumptive democratic nominee for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris. May you continue to shield her against all those who would do her harm. Lord, hear our prayer.
Comparatively, this would be a balanced “Prayers of the People,” fair to the opposing parties. Disappointingly, such basic equality appears to be impossible for our progressive churches and social activists around the country.
In a “prayer” published in the Washington Post (Opinion: Notes for the Almighty, July 7, 2024), written shortly before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, contributing columnist and political theorist at Harvard University, Danielle Allen, wrote: “And, Lord, please speak also directly to Mr. Trump. I cannot imagine what emissaries other than your burning bush might penetrate there. Nor, Lord, can I pretend to understand what sinfulness in us might have led you to inflict upon us the punishment of his malign prominence in our politics.” As if on cue, days later a disturbed young man tried to remove this punishing malignancy from our inflicted nation. I doubt, of course, if this 20-year-old gunman had ever read the Washington Post, so Ms. Allen is hardly culpable, but this type of “prayerful” animus, subtly and overtly, has been going on in the politicized Church for years.
In one prominent, liberal church located here in the heartland from where I write, President Barack Obama was always mentioned by name when the “Prayers of the People” included national, state, and local leaders. Immediately upon President Trump taking office in January of 2016, reference to Trump’s name was dropped, generically favoring “the President.” Even the use of “our President” was too emotionally charged to use. Though anecdotal, this one church represents an extensive “complicit Church” that has demonized its political opponents relentlessly.
Once, following the “shock & awe” invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, while attending an open “Church Forum” held by one of the largest, progressive churches west of the Mississippi, I found myself, incredulously so, in the middle of a “serious” discussion on whether or not President George W. Bush should be “eliminated” for the war criminal that he was, even as pacifist pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt morally compelled to assist his family and the Abwehr in an assassination attempt on the life of Adolph Hitler.
And now we have the “evangelical Christian leader,” author, and “social activist,” Shane Claiborne, who tells us in God Did Not Save Donald Trump, Religion News Service, July 16, 2024: “I’m glad Donald Trump is alive…But my understanding of Christian theology makes me certain that God did not save the former president from assassination” (emphasis mine). He proceeds to fault those politicians and pastors (including Franklin Graham) who thanked and praised God for his providential intervention, concluding that “…there is something wrong with a theology that says God intervened to save Donald Trump, which implies in an awful way that God redirected the bullet into the person who was killed at his rally….” I’m not sure if Claiborne thinks of himself as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes or what (an Inspector Clouseau might be more appropriate), but with seven or eight shots gotten off by the would-be assassin, we’ve no evidence to date that the bullet which pierced Trump’s ear, or any of the bullets, for that matter, were “redirected” by the hand of God, causing the death of fire chief, Corey Comperatore and injuring two other attendees—David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pa., and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pa.
Disturbingly so, it feels as if brother Claiborne knows the mind of God and is more than ready to take upon himself the sovereign, decision-making-process of the “Great I Am.” Blinded by the arrogance of certainty fueled by politics, the activist writes unreservedly, “…we can be sure that God did not save Donald Trump.” Simply put, for Claiborne and the other progressives within the Church, the very thought that God’s “protection” might rest upon Donald Trump is abhorrent, with Claiborne summarily dismissing any such consideration of “God intervening to save Donald Trump” as “bad religion,” incapable of a God of love, whom he assures us “…is not a monster.”
Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I can’t help but reflect: might the liar, the adulterer, and the murderer—no, not Donald Trump but the “apple of God’s eye,” King David of Israel—take exception with Claiborne’s “theological” certitudes, David being certain of God’s own hand of protection upon him.
Driven out of Jerusalem by his son Absalom and eventually taking refuge with his ragtag army in Ephraim, David chose the forest at Ephraim to do battle against his treasonous son, who possessed an overwhelming force of men. The battle was fierce, with 20,000 lives perishing that day as David’s men defeated Absalom and the army of Israel, the jagged rocks and deep ravines, the pointed shrubs and mighty oaks aiding in their protection, Scripture telling us that “…the forest swallowed up more men that day than the sword” (2 Samuel 18:8 NIV), including Absalom, whose long flowing mane (while fleeing on his donkey) wrapped around the branches of a giant oak, where, dangling between heaven and earth, Joab plunged three javelins into the King’s son’s heart. While still mourning the death of his beloved Absalom, a grieving David addressed his men before returning to Jerusalem. Might it be that he used similar words to those found in “a praise for deliverance” from Psalm 124, NIV: “If the Lord had not been on our side—let Israel say—if the Lord had not been on our side when men attacked us, when their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive; the flood would have engulfed us…. Praise be to the Lord…we have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare…Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
For the sake of clarity, dear reader and listener, I hesitatingly add this personal note: former President Donald Trump, the possible 47th president of the United States, is not my King David. Years ago, when he was the toast of NYC, I spent an evening with him at a private soirée he hosted at the Plaza Hotel and found him an affable chap, charming to the hilt, though a little too much of a glad-hander for my Midwestern taste. But despite the “trash talk” about his “destroying our democracy,” I choose to believe that democracy, which is, after all, “we the people,” will survive—either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. I also choose to believe that God alone is sovereign, and that His ways are not ours, and, as he pleases, He can raise one from the dead but not another, accept a dying thief on the cross and leave the other, heal many of the sick while countless others remain suffering, and, even as he did for a deposed and despised King David, place his hand of protection upon the life of Donald Trump, while, tragically, another nearby dies. What I do not believe is that God “redirected” a bullet away from Donald Trump into the body of Corey Comperatore—a devoted husband, father, and Christian. Factually, about the only thing we do know is this: except for Trump turning his head to the right to view a chart displayed on a large screen, he would likely be dead.
Mr. Claiborne, may we not as a people sigh a sigh of relief and collectively say, “Thanks be to God?” Perhaps it is time for you to “ponder anew the things God can do,” and not disparage the millions of Americans who are thanking God for protecting the life of Donald Trump. This “brush with death” is sufficient reason for the nation, irrespective of political stripe, to give thanks to God, and for the many devout Christians who believe “God reigns,” to freely rejoice with King David of old and declare, “Praise be to the Lord…we have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare…Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Psalm 124 NIV).
Amen
“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthians 3:11 KJV)
Share this post