I’ve never subscribed to the old saw that “everything happens for a reason.” After all, it’s easy enough, after the fact, to make up plausible reasons for almost anything. At 21, you rear end another car and a few months later marry the hapless driver you met in the aftermath. You say, “Well, that’s why that accident happened. It was to bring Raymond into my life.”
No. The accident happened because you were fishing for your cell phone which started ringing somewhere in the bowels of your handbag and you took your eyes off the road to search, you ninny!
As a result, you crashed into Raymond’s life, which as far as we know was going along swimmingly at the time. Now, I know if you’re of a certain bent, you’re likely to come back with something like, “Well, but God wanted me to be with Raymond and that’s why the accident happened” or words to that effect. That’s a belief you happen to have. Proof of causation? No.
After a few blessed weeks of relative silence, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders recently emerged to proclaim her belief that God wants Donald Trump to be president of the United States. I respectfully (more or less) disagree, and I was heartened—though shocked—to find an article in a publication called Premier Christianity also questioning Sanders’ belief.
It’s a sad state of affairs when we assume a publication with any kind of Christian connection is going to spew forth offensive, ill-founded claims. Nevertheless, seeing (in my Google search) the title “Q&A: Did God want Donald Trump to be president?” I was steeled for an evangelical (another misused term) diatribe supporting his presidency.
Instead, what I got was a reasoned counter argument by writer Alex Williams to Sanders’ assumption. Williams wrote:
No. The accident happened because you were fishing for your cell phone which started ringing somewhere in the bowels of your handbag and you took your eyes off the road to search, you ninny!
As a result, you crashed into Raymond’s life, which as far as we know was going along swimmingly at the time. Now, I know if you’re of a certain bent, you’re likely to come back with something like, “Well, but God wanted me to be with Raymond and that’s why the accident happened” or words to that effect. That’s a belief you happen to have. Proof of causation? No.
After a few blessed weeks of relative silence, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders recently emerged to proclaim her belief that God wants Donald Trump to be president of the United States. I respectfully (more or less) disagree, and I was heartened—though shocked—to find an article in a publication called Premier Christianity also questioning Sanders’ belief.
It’s a sad state of affairs when we assume a publication with any kind of Christian connection is going to spew forth offensive, ill-founded claims. Nevertheless, seeing (in my Google search) the title “Q&A: Did God want Donald Trump to be president?” I was steeled for an evangelical (another misused term) diatribe supporting his presidency.
Instead, what I got was a reasoned counter argument by writer Alex Williams to Sanders’ assumption. Williams wrote:
“Scripture shows that, on the whole, God is the God of the underdog. He’s about taking folks who are low and raising them high, to a calling. … that to me doesn’t feel like the story of Donald Trump. I would love to ask Sarah Sanders: ‘If God chose Trump then did he choose Obama too?’ And I suspect she might say no. And if she did, I would ask her: ‘So was God having an off day at that point, was he just not powerful at that point?’”
Analyze. Question. Study history. Understand our electoral system. Recognize that we are the ones responsible for the nightmare we’re living right now, and it's up to us to correct it.
Enough said.
Enough said.
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