Trump, Assassination Attempts, and God’s Intervention

The recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has a lot of people talking. Including Christians. What is the significance of Trump’s survival?

One of the conversations I saw was about how Trump narrowly survived this attack. Did God intervene in what would have been an otherwise successful assassination or did God predetermine before the creation of the world that not only that Donald Trump would survive but that Corey Comperatore would survive?

God determined

I will start with the second option. There are Christians who believe that God’s sovereignty is ultimate, such that nothing happens except that God determines it. Not only did God choose who would live and who would die on that day, God chose what each person would wear on that day. Any free will on any level by God’s creation means that God is not sovereign.

That is not the theology that I hold. I do not have the time or space to go through a full discussion of predestination vs free will. I will only say that my reading of the Bible suggests to me that our choices really do matter. On another level, I struggle to accept that every act of rape and child abuse happens because God predetermines that is what is to happen.

Now it is possible that a Christian might hold to a weaker form of predestination who believes that we do have some free will but certain important events are predetermined. Such is the case with the crucifixion of Jesus. But can we tell if this is true with any post-biblical event? I don’t see how we can with any authority.

God intervened

Perhaps of more interest to many is that God intervened in order for Trump to survive. I do believe that God does intervene in certain situations. Was this one of them? I cannot say for certain.

The problem is that people use this to indicate some special approval of Trump by God as demonstrated by his amazing survival. The only problem is that Adolf Hitler also narrowly escaped assassination (learn more about it here). None of us would interpret it as God intervening so that Hitler could continue his plans.

I would ask this: Is it possible that Donald Trump survived simply because the bullet hit his ear and not another part of his body?

What does this mean for us?

As interesting as this may be for us, I have a more important question. What does it mean when bad things happen to us and what does it mean when bad things do not happen to us? This comes down to the question of how much God intervenes in our daily lives.

I am not a deist and I do not believe that God created the universe and then walked away. I also can point out some specific answers to prayer in which it really looks like God intervened.

But when you are late for work and there is one parking space left available, is it because God saved that space for you or is it just the way things happened? If you stop by your favourite cafe and they are out of coffee, is that God punishing you? Some Christians see life like this.

Is it possible that things happen just because that’s the way they happen? Severe weather events happen because all of the ingredients for that event happen to be present. A job becomes available because another employee happened to leave. It is often said that Christians do not believe in coincidences but perhaps we should.

When our children were first diagnosed with autism, a lot of people were speculating about why God gave us autistic children. What was God’s special purpose?

I actually did not see it that way at all. That seems to assume that God intervened to change their original neurotypical brains into autistic brains, just for some greater plan. I assumed that all of things that cause autism (DNA, etc) happened to be present and so they developed autism.

I think we can sometimes over-spiritualize things and see God’s intervention everywhere, as if God was constantly tinkering to change what would have been the natural outcome.

Again, I do believe that God answers prayer and that God intervenes. I would even be fine of Trump felt that God intervened. But in general, we should be very careful in interpreting every good or bad event as God’s specific intervention. This is especially true if we are going to use that intervention as a sign of God’s approval or disapproval.