Immediately after the horrific assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, some people of faith began claiming God protected him. For example, Franklin Graham unequivocally pronounced, “God spared his life.”
But that popular affirmation raises difficult questions, which even Graham acknowledged.
Martin Thielen
Right before he prayed to God (“It was you and you alone who saved him”) at the Republican National Convention, Graham said he could not explain why God would spare Trump’s life and “allow another one to be taken.”
So the question remains: If God protected Donald Trump, why didn’t God also protect Corey Comperatore, a beloved husband, father and firefighter who sacrificed his own life to shield his wife and children from harm?
And, if God did protect Trump, why didn’t God protect Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy? Why didn’t God protect Bobby Kennedy from death or Ronald Reagan from serious injury? While he was at it, why didn’t God protect Martin Luther King Jr. from assassination or the four little Black girls killed at a church bombing in the 1960s?
These questions are endless. If God protected Trump, why didn’t God protect all the Black people who were lynched in the United States due to the evil of racism? Why didn’t God protect the soldiers who died in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan?
If God protected Trump, why doesn’t God protect children from leukemia, women from rape or people from Alzheimer’s? Why hasn’t God protected the thousands of women and children recently killed in the Gaza war? Why didn’t God protect the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust? Or the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Asian tsunami?
My answer to these questions may trouble you. And I could certainly be wrong. When it comes to the mysteries of God, none of us are experts. But my answer to the above questions is simple.
“God is not in the protection business.”
The reason God didn’t protect all of these people is because God is not in the protection business. That seems obvious from the evidence we witness every day.
Instead, God set up natural laws (like gravity and weather patterns), and God doesn’t violate those laws. God gave human beings the gift of radical freedom, and God doesn’t protect us from people who abuse that freedom, including would-be assassins.
In the face of suffering, the words of Psalm 23 are instructive. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” The promise of Psalm 23 is not God’s protection but God’s presence, which is usually mediated by the people around us.
I’m glad Donald Trump wasn’t killed by an assassin. But I don’t believe God protected him. So why did Donald Trump survive his assassination attempt? Because the shooter missed. I wish he had also missed Corey Comperatore. I bet God feels the same way.
Martin Thielen, a retired minister, is the creator and author of www.DoubtersParish.com.
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