I am in a state of theological outrage. It has to do with how Donald Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet has been used to claim divine intervention to save his life, a claim that no doubt aided his campaign.
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, high priest and lord chancellor of the Trump regime, said, “God miraculously saved the president’s life — I think it is undeniable — and he (God) did it for an obvious purpose. His presidency and his life are fruits of divine providence. He (Trump) points that out all the time and he’s right to do so.”
Stephen Shoemaker
What, then, I ask, as jarringly as necessary: “What about the firefighter who perished in the attack? Does this God require blood sacrifice for his purposes, this life expendable to save Trump’s divine mission? Does this God accept collateral damage to achieve his plans?”
What kind of tribal god sits on the throne of those in power to save his chosen and kill a bystander? Is it a God who gives divine help to rob the poor of health care and food for children in order to line the pockets of the ultra-rich oligarchs of our nation?
“Does this God require blood sacrifice for his purposes?”
We saw the photo of Speaker Johnson bowing, thanking and praising God with his colleagues for God’s help in passing the murderously cruel “big beautiful bill.” What kind of God is this? With the Medicaid cuts on the horizon and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, people will die from loss of health care and children will go to bed hungry. A God of child sacrifice, anyone?
It all returns to the character of the God we worship and to the always treacherous combination of Christianity and political power.
The acclaimed novelist Marilynne Robinson in her brilliant new book, Reading Genesis, begins with a startling sentence: “The Bible is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil.” It must, must, she adds, “acknowledge in a meaningful way the darkest aspects of our experience, and it must reconcile them with the goodness of God and of Being itself against which this darkness stands out so sharply.”
We see the struggle to understand the problem of evil all through Hebrew and Christian Scripture.
One of the most difficult of questions is, “When does God intervene in human affairs and human life and how, and when not, why?” Easy answers to these questions are often misguided and unintentionally cruel. When they are used to justify political ends, they are blasphemy and break the first two of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” and, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”
“We have a Christian Crusader at the head of America’s military.”
When Pope Urban II launched the Crusades, he lifted up as the banner “Deus Lo Volt” —“God Wills It.” A prominent tattoo on the bicep of our secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is a deliberate use of the Crusader rallying cry. “Deus Volt” adorns his muscles. It is a popular symbol among Christian extremists like the Proud Boys and others who raided the Capitol on January 6. We have a Christian Crusader at the head of America’s military.
As we ponder the problem of evil as people of faith, there are intellectual difficulties to making sense of a world of evil created by a good God. Our attempts to do so are humanly limited and often not long satisfactory. So we ponder along with the problem of evil the mystery of good pervading our life and world. And we seek a trust in a God who is with us in it all, and through it all. Such a God is a God of suffering love, a love made eloquent on the Cross.
When William Sloane Coffin was minister at Riverside Church in New York City, his 24-year-old son Alex drowned as his car went off a bridge into Boston Harbor. A few weeks later, the pastor spoke of his son’s death in the Riverside pulpit. He told of the day after Alex’s death when a woman came in the door of his sister’s house carrying an armful of quiches.
She said as she hurried past to the kitchen, “I just don’t understand the will of God.” Coffin flew after her in hot pursuit. “I’ll say you don’t, lady!”
He explained, “I needed the anger, and she needed the instruction.”
One of his consolations was that it was not God’s hand on the wheel of his son’s car. Then Coffin added these luminous words, “When the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was first of all our hearts to break.”
God’s heart breaks with our nation’s heart today and over the victims of our nation’s new tribal god.
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.