What a God Wants, What a God Needs
I have to admit that it's really something to hear the assertion that God chose Trump from people who apparently manage to tie their own shoes and walk upright.
But it explains a lot.
Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders' statement. It explains why she is constantly lying and working to obscure the truth; if you are working for God's Chosen Leader, you can rationalize that away easily enough in service to making things better or easier for some higher purpose, and to do otherwise might put you right in God's crosshairs. It probably also lets you sleep at night.
But let's see where this kind of reasoning goes. God wanted Trump to be President, and therefore, he is. Does that mean God wanted Obama to be President for eight years? That God wanted Bill Clinton to be President for eight years? That God wanted Nixon to be President? That God wanted Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House? That God wanted Democrats to take the majority in the House? That God wanted Mueller to be the one investigating Trump right now?
In short, if anyone has any kind of political power, does that mean that God wanted that, even if the people in political power at different times espouse very different political philosophies and goals? Is any form of democracy simply an illusion?
It's possible that Sanders was even going full Calvinist and asserting that God desires and controls every single event in the universe, meaning that God even wanted (and orchestrated) Hitler's rise to power; arguably, that would make God the ultimate cause of political evil, and that puts us in a weird theological spot. It's also putting words in Sanders' mouth, but it's worth seeing what the logical conclusion of her chosen verb is.
See, Sanders used the word "wanted". As in intention. Not "permitted"; not "allowed"; not even "tolerated" -- but "wanted" Trump to be President. She claims to know the mind of God. That alone should be deeply unsettling.
But in some sense, it's a claim that out of all Americans, God wanted the thrice-divorced, sexist, racist, bullying, dishonest blowhard with the least amount of integrity, decency, and character to run a country of over three hundred million people. That he wanted the man whose every single business endeavor has been shown to be either con jobs or outright illegal to be President. That he wanted the man who mocked a handicapped reporter, pontificated about what his then one-year-old daughter's future breasts would look like, insisted that as a rich person he was allowed to and did simply grab women's genitals, urged his followers at campaign rallies to commit violence, referred to honest-to-God Nazis as "very fine people", and many other nakedly reprehensible things to be President?
In other words, in contradistinction to everything we've heard from Evangelicals for years about how much character matters in our political leaders (and how that's something God wants and that we should want), God has made it clear that they've simply been wrong for decades. Is this what we're supposed to understand?
Let me apply Occam's Razor and offer a simpler suggestion: Sanders was speaking nonsense. Sanders was unafraid to announce her tremendous theological ignorance, intellectual laziness, thorough incuriosity, closed mind, shallow sensibilities, and complete lack of basic logic -- and her deep-seated conviction that she knew the mind of God.
Make no mistake -- if the election had gone differently, it would be just as presumptuous to say that God wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Such statements tend to be carelessly thrown about in the emotional highs surrounding the glory of a victory. But I suspect there's a lot more to Sanders' statement than simple ebullience or lack of reflection. It seems like an attempt to find support for a President who is tanking in support with almost every voter demographic. Strategically speaking, they have to hold on to white Evangelicals.
But it explains a lot.
Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders' statement. It explains why she is constantly lying and working to obscure the truth; if you are working for God's Chosen Leader, you can rationalize that away easily enough in service to making things better or easier for some higher purpose, and to do otherwise might put you right in God's crosshairs. It probably also lets you sleep at night.
But let's see where this kind of reasoning goes. God wanted Trump to be President, and therefore, he is. Does that mean God wanted Obama to be President for eight years? That God wanted Bill Clinton to be President for eight years? That God wanted Nixon to be President? That God wanted Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House? That God wanted Democrats to take the majority in the House? That God wanted Mueller to be the one investigating Trump right now?
In short, if anyone has any kind of political power, does that mean that God wanted that, even if the people in political power at different times espouse very different political philosophies and goals? Is any form of democracy simply an illusion?
It's possible that Sanders was even going full Calvinist and asserting that God desires and controls every single event in the universe, meaning that God even wanted (and orchestrated) Hitler's rise to power; arguably, that would make God the ultimate cause of political evil, and that puts us in a weird theological spot. It's also putting words in Sanders' mouth, but it's worth seeing what the logical conclusion of her chosen verb is.
See, Sanders used the word "wanted". As in intention. Not "permitted"; not "allowed"; not even "tolerated" -- but "wanted" Trump to be President. She claims to know the mind of God. That alone should be deeply unsettling.
But in some sense, it's a claim that out of all Americans, God wanted the thrice-divorced, sexist, racist, bullying, dishonest blowhard with the least amount of integrity, decency, and character to run a country of over three hundred million people. That he wanted the man whose every single business endeavor has been shown to be either con jobs or outright illegal to be President. That he wanted the man who mocked a handicapped reporter, pontificated about what his then one-year-old daughter's future breasts would look like, insisted that as a rich person he was allowed to and did simply grab women's genitals, urged his followers at campaign rallies to commit violence, referred to honest-to-God Nazis as "very fine people", and many other nakedly reprehensible things to be President?
In other words, in contradistinction to everything we've heard from Evangelicals for years about how much character matters in our political leaders (and how that's something God wants and that we should want), God has made it clear that they've simply been wrong for decades. Is this what we're supposed to understand?
Let me apply Occam's Razor and offer a simpler suggestion: Sanders was speaking nonsense. Sanders was unafraid to announce her tremendous theological ignorance, intellectual laziness, thorough incuriosity, closed mind, shallow sensibilities, and complete lack of basic logic -- and her deep-seated conviction that she knew the mind of God.
Make no mistake -- if the election had gone differently, it would be just as presumptuous to say that God wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Such statements tend to be carelessly thrown about in the emotional highs surrounding the glory of a victory. But I suspect there's a lot more to Sanders' statement than simple ebullience or lack of reflection. It seems like an attempt to find support for a President who is tanking in support with almost every voter demographic. Strategically speaking, they have to hold on to white Evangelicals.
Comments
Post a Comment