Providence for Me but Not for Thee

Since the attempted assassination of former President Trump, there has been much talk of God’s “providence” and “sovereign” will. It’s at times like this when one realizes that many people just regurgitate what they learned in seminary, college, or from some pastor somewhere. As I’ve listened to recent sermons and read some of the things posted on social media or media in general, one gets the clear sense many of these people have not thought things through.

For those claiming God’s providence when it comes to Trump, what are they suggesting when it comes to Corey Comperatore, father of two, who lost his life in those same moments? What about the two other people critically wounded as well? What do those families take from the idea that God’s providence only reached so far that day? Why is it that when it’s someone we know, or something we support/like/admire who escapes a brush with death/tragedy we claim God’s providence, but for the rest, it’s just mindless tough luck?

How do we suppose that makes those families feel?

Where was God’s providence in all the school shootings over the past decades? Where was it when President Kennedy was assassinated? One begins to get the feeling this talk of providence is self-fulfilling and more a reflection of our own wants and desires rather than a deep understanding of God’s moving or purposes. Our pronouncements seem a bit too self-serving in my mind. They invariably leave others out and make God out to be someone who plays favorites or is no more predictable than a tornado or random bullet.

Many Christians rightly criticize the idea of a purely physical, material, and mechanistic existence/universe. The idea is that all is simply matter-in-motion whether it be the planets or the neurons firing in our brains. It’s all physics and mathematics. From the Big Bang forward, all has been action and reaction according to the laws of physics. Imagine existence as a primordial pipe bomb that went off and each fragment is set off in trajectory of its own and on and on until somehow everything is pulled back into a black hole and all the lights go out or something else happens. But it’s all random and without purpose or meaning beyond motion until that motion ends. Existence and all that flows from it is a matter only of physics and math/trajectory/movement.

The problem with the “God is sovereign” “God is in control of everything” “God’s providence” “Nothing happens but for God” people is that they really have the same sort of view of existence as the materialist, they simply make God the pipe bomb and add the idea that God is in charge of each fragment in where it goes and what it does. If you get hit by one of the fragments, that was God (a reminder we live in an evil world). If a fragment misses you, that was God too (“providence”).

There are ways to view God’s good creation, the Fall, and God’s purposes in ways not beholden to a Calvinist theology of God’s “perfect and permissive will.” These sorts of attempts to make sense of the world end up coming back to a familiar theme: When I like the outcome, it’s God’s perfect will. When I don’t, it’s God’s permissive will. How does this not ultimately make God the source and cause of evil in the world?

Let’s say I’m the fire chief. I’m sitting up in my tower over the fire station and I can see the entire town. I notice someone setting fire to a house. I think to myself, this isn’t good but I will permit it—that’s my permissive will. I have my reasons. I look toward another part of town. I see a person setting fire to a different house. I decide to prevent that house from burning. That is my perfect will. In that case, I intervene. I have my reasons.

One might object- but you are comparing an imperfect sinful man with a perfect God. I grant the difference but such an observation misses the point. It’s not a problem of scale. It’s a problem of moral reasoning no matter the flaws or perfections of each, given the power to act. First, I wonder why we accept in God what we would never accept in a mere person as to acting or not acting. Second, unless capricious the reasons must have something to do with a supposed greater good, but if purchased at such a cost, one has to wonder about such a “good.” I suspect the person whose house burned down (or who lost a loved one) might have some questions.

When we think of a person doing what the fire chief does, we realize how crazy it sounds. For some reason though, if it’s God, we build an entire theology of glory around it. And we don’t do it saying God is just arbitrary or random although perfect. No, we say it was God’s “permissive” will, which means it was God’s will nonetheless. We probably do this so we can sleep at night knowing we’ve created a God who may just be the devil.

When it comes to the failed attempt to kill former President Donald Trump, maybe God or providence had nothing to do with it. Maybe they had nothing to do with a man losing his life that day or others being critically wounded. Maybe it was simply the result of a young man’s choices (along with a myriad of factors in which, perhaps, we all are complicit). But we can’t hardly live with that, can we? There has to be more. I’m all for there being more, but what I wonder is why the “more” is always what we (if spared) wanted and hoped for, but never what the other person (if struck down) wanted or hoped for. It was providence for me but not for thee. Square that for me.

I will close this post with the words of one of my favorite modern theologians/philosophers:

“There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of secondary causality—in nature or history—is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But one should consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of—but entirely by way of—every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on). It is a strange thing indeed to seek peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome.” -David Bentley Hart (From The Doors of the Sea)

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