God’s Providential Plan for Us Embraces Everything We Do — Even Politics

God’s purposes are often unknowable by us, but there’s no question that he has a plan.

A chorus of populist theologizing greeted the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Much of it was along the lines of “Considering that the shot missed killing him by only a couple of inches, God must have been looking out for him.”

I fully agree. God certainly was looking out for the former president. So what else might we say about what happened?

Although pushing too hard to explain God’s ways can be presumptuous, we can at least say that any serious attempt to understand will run up against mystery. Comprehending God’s plan in its literally unimaginable extent and complexity lies far beyond our limited capacity for grasping divine realities other than those he reveals. As for the little that we do see, it’s seen, as St. Paul remarks, as through a glass — darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

In the present case, then, start with the obvious. God isn’t a Democrat or a Republican or anything else in political terms. But politics and politicians do have places in God’s providential plan, as do everyone and everything that exists now or ever has existed in the past or ever will exist in the future. Also, although God doesn’t cause evil, he does permit evil’s intrusion into history — including the evil done by crackbrained individuals who shoot celebrities.

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