Not just noise

God works contrary to means, the Protestant Reformers liked to say. Of course He can use means—the missionary preaches and the pagan converts. He can work without means—parting the Red Sea, shutting the mouths of lions. But those of us who trust Him fully depend on this: God works contrary to means—raising Christ from the dead, turning sinners into saints.

But it seems to me such contrariness should be left up to God, not deployed as a tool of statecraft.

Our president, with his tweeted and spoken words, has embarrassed and diminished the nation’s highest office. He has done so particularly on matters of foreign policy, drawing international scorn high and low. Those who defend him in the midst of these escapades seem to be counting on his contrariness, or God’s, to triumph in the end.

Who knows but that the juvenile tweet about the size of nuclear buttons didn’t force the juvenile Kim Jong Un to have someone phone the South Koreans and ask for direct talks—something that hasn’t happened in decades? That “taking names” at the UN will bring a turnaround in its stance toward Israel? Or that slams on would-be immigrants from the poorest nations will make a few real rapists and terrorists think twice before swimming the Rio Grande?

Our president, with his tweeted and spoken words, has embarrassed and diminished the nation’s highest office.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves that this will end well. Possibly it might, but normal cause-and-effect in life under the sun suggests it won’t, even as stalwarts like evangelical adviser Johnnie Moore claim, as he did recently, “For me, it’s all noise.”

Beneath the noise and the “wins” Trump’s supporters like to tally to defend his record is a trembling and tottering ship of state and a growing global resentment.

Why, for instance, in the very moment Ambassador Nikki Haley called for an emergency UN session, declaring Iran “on notice” for its crackdown on street protesters, was the United States leaving in limbo 100 Iranian Christian refugees? These are not migrants, they are refugees who reportedly face persecution, were approved by the UN, vetted by the Department of Homeland Security, and invited to apply for asylum under the United States’ Lautenberg Amendment. They gave up property and possessions, and one year later are stuck in Vienna, where, reportedly, the United States is working to resettle them in other countries. State Department officials did not answer my inquiries, and it’s a story we will continue to follow.

In the meantime, people I talk to in Washington, including longtime experts on foreign policy, human rights lawyers, people who have done the hard work of seeking public justice and crafting legislation, who have survived three, four, even five administrations, sound now when I talk to them … tight. Like someone has them by the neck. Maybe things will turn out, but they’re constrained and unsure, almost fearful. They are hoping Trump works contrary to means.

Possibly when the dust has cleared and the volleys die down over which vulgarity Trump actually used to describe Africans and Haitians (because he didn’t deny the sentiment, only the terms in which it was expressed), we will actually have immigration legislation. Columnist Daniel Henninger noted of White House meetings with lawmakers, “They looked like politicians doing real work.” And truly if you watched the footage, it was so surprising it was worth noting. But that was before the president seemed to backtrack and before Trump’s “s---hole” comment took center stage.

Immigration lobbyist Dan Stein perhaps summed up best the feeling that’s forming around this White House: “There might be some brilliance that transcends my understanding,” he told The Weekly Standard. “It’d be fun to watch, if you didn’t feel like you were getting screwed.”

It’s part of an emerging pattern: a president who can’t be anything but center stage, the one it all hinges on. Call his policies right or wrong, he seems simply not to accept the United States as a nation ruled by laws, not by man. But that’s how we’ve survived thus far, and why with that and the contrary means of God we may again.