Providence and presidents

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump represents one of those rare historical moments when fundamental truths are clarified. Yesterday’s attack at President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania shocked the nation and the watching world, and it instantly revealed so many essential truths.

First, life and death can come down to a matter of a millimeter. The video of President Trump grabbing his ear and then diving onto the platform will be indelibly etched into the nation’s historical memory. Just the slightest deviation in the path of that ammunition round would have changed a bleeding ear into a dead former president, even as Trump is just days from his official nomination as the Republican candidate in the coming election. How can human life be so fragile as that? But the fragility of life is essential to our understanding of the gift of life. In a world of sin and evil, assassins and pathogens, every breath we take is a gift. At some point, a single breath will be our last.

For Donald Trump, his last breath could have come yesterday, broadcast to the entire world. Thankfully, that was not the case. But why? Those who hold to a purely materialistic and naturalistic worldview have no answer but luck, which is a major doctrine of secular theology. But Donald Trump (and the watching world as well) must surely know in his heart that something far greater than luck preserved his life. Speaking to the press, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., acknowledged the hairline distance that separated life and death in the assassination attempt: “Fate stepped in.” Interestingly, it was President Trump himself who clarified the issue, posting on Truth Social that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” Indeed, it was God and God alone, for God alone is the sovereign ruler of the cosmos.

Second, the reality of moral evil and the necessity of moral responsibility were instantly clarified yesterday. America has known so many tragedies, including the horrifying assassinations of presidents and presidential candidates. But in every case, the correct moral impulse is to find the assassin, stop the threat, and hold to account anyone involved in such a horrific crime. No one speaks then of moral relativism or makes ridiculous claims that morality is nothing more than social convention or cultural construction. This was an attempt to assassinate a former president of the United States and a current (leading) candidate for the White House who is headed to accept the nomination of his party within days. This was an attempt to abandon politics and embrace violence. This was a premeditated attempt to undermine an entire civilization and kill a human being. Though President Trump survived the attempt, at least one American is dead, a beloved husband and father named Corey Comperatore, and at least two others are critically wounded. This was an evil act, and no sane person is arguing otherwise. That should tell us something really important.

Third, as a dimension of human activity, politics brings out the best and the worst in us, and more often it’s the worst. This is especially true when the stakes are as high as we see in the 2024 election. Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, along with their two parties, do not merely represent two different plans for America. In reality, the two parties, and the two presidents, now represent two different visions of America. President Biden rightly called President Trump to speak thankfully of his preservation and to acknowledge the evil of violence. Every single politician on the Sunday news programs spoke to the same conviction—that violence is a threat to our entire constitutional order and that violent acts like what happened on Saturday are never acceptable. No doubt they mean it when they say it.

But, even in the calmest of times, military metaphors abound in political campaigns. The path to victory requires rendering your opponent as a threat to the very existence of the nation. Language matters, and while both sides are quite capable (and often guilty) of using overheated and violent language, the political left in the United States has demonized Donald Trump and has fueled the atmosphere of violent language and imagery. Biden’s language of putting a “bullseye” on Trump is perhaps the clearest example. That language has not aged well, to say the least.

Finally, there are so many questions that demand answers. Once again, the urgent demand for those answers is a testimony to the fact that God made us moral creatures who are driven by an insatiable appetite to understand the world in moral terms. We are also driven by the urgency of holding people accountable for their actions. No doubt, yesterday’s horrors will launch innumerable investigations. But some of the questions cannot ever be answered, for the suspected shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, is dead. Why would a 20-year-old young man from rural Pennsylvania do such a thing? We are right to demand answers, but we will surely be frustrated by the lack of adequate answers.

Clearly, our political system is not well. The stakes in the coming election are genuinely high. Both sides know it, and yesterday’s events will not bring about a kinder and gentler political culture. The 2024 election looms large as we consider the future of our nation. Those who see no higher plane than politics are increasingly desperate. Christians cannot share that kind of desperation.

Why? Because the Christian faith underlines the two realities of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Both are absolutely necessary to Biblical Christianity, and both are absolutely necessary to the Christian worldview in every respect. But though both are necessary, they are not equal. Human responsibility is real, but it exists only within the transcendent reality of God, and within the context of his unconditional providence. The reality of God’s providence is something many Americans, and no doubt many Christians, think about with far too little seriousness. But I dare to ask, how do you look at yesterday’s events in Butler, Pa., and see it all merely as a lucky miss? If that’s all there is to it, our luck will one day run out. Thank God that day was not yesterday.