Politics, Evil, Discernment, Grace, And Prayer

In my last blog, I talked about former President Donald Trump’s close brush with an assassin’s bullet being a miracle. An answer to the prayer that evil will be thwarted.

Photo by Ben White

One reader objected. She wrote, in part:

“It hurts my heart to hear people say that somehow God spared Trump. Especially people I have respected like yourself.

“Any assassination attempt is reprehensible.

“I don’t condone violence of any kind. 

“I guess if Trump had been killed things could have gone out of control because a group of his violent-leaning followers would have probably tried to incite a civil war. 

“And we were spared that. 

“I hope that’s what you mean when you talk about a miracle. 

“But the man who lost his life – should not have lost his life. 

“Access to guns by troubled people is way too easy in this country.

“We have lost too many beautiful children in schools because of gun violence. Why were those beautiful souls not spared?

“. . . Trump was just lucky.”

She then went on to express her thoughts about Donald Trump.

Here’s what I answered:

Yes, that is what I meant: probably many lives were spared, and things might have gone really badly had the assassination been successful.

My point was that evil was thwarted, and isn’t that what we should always pray for? For evil of all kinds to be thwarted?

 It’s up to God to judge our leaders. We are called to be discerning. 

I always attempt to be discerning, to detect lies from truth. (Not easy to do in today’s world!)

One clue I always look for is based on what Jesus said about Satan in John 10: his goal is to kill, steal and destroy. Whenever I see signs of that, I know where it’s coming from.

Another clue is deception: Satan is a liar. He lies and he twists the truth. 

Finally, I know that no human or human organization is perfect, and no political party gets it right. Blindly following a leader as if they are the savior is not only foolish, it is dangerous.

In today’s world, we must also cast a critical eye on the media, and who is feeding us information. Recognize when you see the signs of distorted thinking, in a leader or the media, and pray your way to the truth. (How many of these can you count in political campaigns?)

Wisdom realizes that in a fallen world, we often have to choose between the lesser of two evils. That’s the problem before us now, no?

The whole assassination incident is a parable of our life in this world: Evil is at work, we are called to pray against it, and God’s grace is often extended, but usually not completely in this world. Corey Comperatore did die. More could have, including the other two men who were wounded.

In these situations, we can rail about “why did anything bad happen at all?”

My answer is, things are not yet as they should be. The twisting that the Bible calls sin is operant in the world, as it always has been.

But so is grace.

I choose to see grace here, rather than question why things aren’t perfect.

Grace happens, I believe, largely as a result of prayer. God is at work, but he mostly does it through prayer, it seems.

That’s why I say, we must keep praying.

Pray, and look for the answers, and rejoice whenever you see the hand of grace.

Photo by Martin Jernberg

P.S. Right after writing this, I happened to read a news account of a man who plowed into a squad car before taking cops on a chase at speeds exceeding 120 mph. The grace here is that when the perpetrator slammed into the squad car, he nearly but did not strike the officer, the cop had not been harmed, and no innocent motorists were harmed, either.

Grace!

(And a reminder to pray for the protection of those who daily put themselves in harm’s way to protect us.)