“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason — and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We’re going to fulfill that.” Donald Trump quoted in “Five Things We Learned about Faith Voters,” Religion Unplugged, 11/6/24

It’s hard to know where to begin today, as I try to absorb the result of the presidential election yesterday. In the last couple of months, I had come to believe that Kamala Harris would not win the election, although I had held onto to a shred of hope that maybe I would be surprised. But, the extent of her loss is staggering, devastating, crushing to me.

I now feel certain that I will never see a woman elected as president in my lifetime. And, more than that, that our next President will be a self-aggrandizing, misogynistic, mean-spirited, racist scoundrel.

Given the issues and liabilities of Mr. Trump, any woman should have been able to beat him handily. Yet, we have the opposite. Could it really be that God spared his life so he could regain the presidency to bring back American “greatness” (whatever that’s supposed to mean)?

I hope not.

I generally don’t believe in any sort of notion of “particular providence,” that God gets so intimately involved in the affairs of human beings. I can’t connect myself to a small and arbitrary God who rescues one person while allowing a whole bunch of other people to suffer terrible calamities and deaths.

I am aware that the Bible contains many stories of God employing seemingly unexpected, unremarkable, even undeserving, people for important work. But, don’t those stories also suggest that those people had some idea of God’s expectations, that God generally seeks to lift up the lowly and to strike down the mighty? That God has a decidedly different notion of “greatness” than Mr. Trump, his advisers, and those who eagerly back him? That to feel that sort of linkage of the Divine must be a profoundly humbling experience?

If we are to believe, like it or not, that Mr. Trump is somehow doing “God’s work,” is it too much to ask Mr. Trump and his minions to:

• Stop using language about others that they would not use about themselves (you know, like the Golden Rule, which is in the Bible, outlines);
• Show humanity, empathy and dignity toward migrants, immigrants, new residents, and new citizens (Deuteronomy 10:19; Psalm 146:9, Matthew 25:35 are just a few examples of many);
• Recognize, appreciate and seek to follow at least some of the commandments, like not bearing false witness;
• Refrain from demonizing those on the margins, like transgender folk (after all, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors); and,
• Seek to follow a more righteous path.

America’s “greatness,” if it is to be judged by biblical standards, must involve justice and compassion, mercy and love.

To think that Mr. Trump is God’s new spokesperson and right-hand guy would essentially require the dismissal of almost the entirety of Christianity’s holy scriptures, the lessons and perspectives that are contained in that book, especially in the New Testament. If Mr. Trump, his advisors and enthusiasts, are so sure that there was divine intervention at the rally when he was shot and that his life was spared for this moment (and the next four years), this would be a good time to learn and to reflect on how they are being called to conform to God’s expectations, rather than the other way around.