(RNS) — I’m glad Donald Trump is alive, and I’m quite confident God is, too. But my understanding of Christian theology makes me certain that God did not save the former president from assassination.
Nearly immediately after word of the shooting broke, pastors and politicians took to social media to thank God for saving Trump. “God protected President Trump,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio posted on X. Franklin Graham chimed in. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, said it was “a demonstration of the power of Almighty God,” calling it “inexplicable apart from God.”
Jeffress, a longtime Trump supporter, went further: “I believe God spared Donald Trump’s life for a purpose … for the purpose of calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation.”
Theology — the attempt by our finite minds to try to make sense of a God who is infinitely bigger than our imaginations — can be tricky. But in this case it’s not that hard to see that there is something wrong with a theology that says God intervened to save Donald Trump, which implies in an awful way that God redirected the bullet into the person who was killed at his rally, or the two people who were grievously injured.
One of the few things we can say definitively about God is this: God is love. This idea is at the heart of the Christian faith. The New Testament says, “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God abides in us … .” The Apostle Paul wrote, “All the law is summed up into this command — Love. Love God and each other.”
Scripture also makes it clear that love is kind and good and gentle. Love always protects and forgives and makes room for mercy and grace. Love advocates for life and human flourishing.
If God is love, and I’m convinced God is love, then God certainly wants all of us to live and flourish, and it breaks God’s heart every time we hurt or kill one another. Murder is always wrong, going all the way back to the inaugural murder of Cain and Abel.
With this in mind, we can be sure that God did not save Donald Trump but not the person killed by mistake. God did not save Trump, for that matter, but not the kids at Sandy Hook or Uvalde. God did not save some of the Israeli hostages but not the others. God does not want thousands of kids in Gaza to die.
God is not a monster. God did not want people to be killed on Oct. 7 or Jan. 6 or last night in Butler, Pennsylvania. God is the author of life, and God is on the side of life. God wants us to live and flourish.
If the final product of our best theological attempts to make sense of the world leaves us with a version of God that is less kind, less loving, less just, less compassionate than we are, then there is something wrong with our theology.
If our theology lands us with a version of God that hates all the same people we hate, excludes all the same people we exclude, kills all the people we want killed and saves all the people we want saved, there is something wrong with our theology. That kind of thinking recalls the old saying, “God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor.”
Any theology that puts God, rather than sinful human beings, behind a gun or a bomb is bad theology.
I believe this is precisely why Jesus came — to show us what God is like and what love looks like … with skin on, in the flesh. Jesus is unmistakably nonviolent. Jesus is the greatest champion of life that has ever lived. He enters a world full of violence and exposes, absorbs and subverts it at every turn.
If we don’t conclude that God saved Trump on Saturday, what lesson should Christians take from Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life?
The nonviolence of God doesn’t get much more clear than when Jesus interrupts the violence of one of his own disciples. As the story goes, as the authorities come to arrest Jesus, Peter impulsively pulls out his sword and cuts off the ear of one of the soldiers sent to take him into custody.
Jesus’ response is brilliant. First, he scolds Peter, telling him to put his sword away: “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he says. Then Jesus heals the man’s ear. The message is crystal clear: The way of Jesus is nonviolence, even toward those who are violent to us. We do not return harm for harm. We overcome evil with good.
The early Christians got it. They understood that for Christ we may die, but we may not kill. Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, said, “When Jesus disarmed Peter, he disarmed every one of us.”
If ever there were a case to be made for justifiable violence, even to protect the innocent, Peter had it. But Jesus made clear there is no such thing as redemptive violence, even to protect the Messiah himself. Violence is the problem, not the solution. Violence is the disease, not the cure.
There is no place for political violence in America from any quarter, but especially for any of us who choose to follow Jesus. Jesus shows us another way than the sword or the bomb or the gun — a way to interact with evil without becoming evil. Peter learned, and any of us who dare follow Jesus must also learn, that we cannot carry a cross in one hand and a weapon in the other. We cannot serve two masters.
The recent assassination attempt should cause us to consider how combustible our country is right now, so divided, so angry, so fearful. It should cause those of us who believe in God to take a closer look at our theology.
Shane Claiborne of Red Letter Christians. Image courtesy of Shane Claiborne
If our theology does not make us more loving, then we should question our theology. In the words of theologian Barbara Brown Taylor, “The only clear line I draw these days is this: When my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor … Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”
(Shane Claiborne is an activist, author and co-director of Red Letter Christians. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)
