Letter #100: A MAGA Miracle?
Thou shalt not be afraid for the arrow that flieth by day...
I see your lucid reflections on the subtleties of religious toleration and raise you one weighty philosophical question: did God move Donald Trump’s head out of the path of that bullet?
I can’t believe I’m asking, but I’m also completely serious. We started this month with your essay on how compulsively we avoid talking about God. I replied that at least it helps keep things civil: it’s hard to trade stocks and build rocketships if you’re busy getting fitted for thumbscrews. You pointed out that in principle, it should be possible to address questions of religion without either waving them away in a haze of smug universalist nonsense, or eviscerating each other in an orgy of violent hatred.
That would be nice. In practice, as we saw at the RNC, it still seems like we either end up screeching about our religious disagreements in a string of braindead obscenities, or just agreeing not to talk about them. Both lame options.
But now here’s an actual concrete event of world historic consequence where the issue of divine intervention just refuses to be ignored. A sliver of air separated us from civil war that day, like a razor wire slicing through time and peeling one possible future apart from another. It’s the kind of thing faith trains you to notice in your personal life, where events clatter seemingly at random into just that arrangement you need. Believers couldn’t help but recognize an act of providence.
Meanwhile atheists thought…what, exactly? That if you run the tape back a quintillion times you’re bound to get one like the one we watched? That ours was just the unluckiest of all possible snipers? I mean, really, let’s get down to specifics: what is the picture of reality that most plausibly accounts for what we all just saw? For that matter, if it’s a picture with God in it, what kind of God does he have to be?
Not one who stands apart and leaves us to our own devices, surely—not one who consents to play nicely by our little mechanical rules of cause and effect. If this is a miracle, we’re looking at a God with personal intentions, willing to reach into nature from outside and tap us on the shoulder. You don’t get stuff like this from abstract “life forces” or from “the universe.”
I’m well aware what a clown show this could become, and how quickly—you start out speculating that God saved Trump’s life and end up asking how many Republican delegates can dance on the head of a MAGA campaign pin.
But I do think there are things we can say in this kind of conversation—if not with certainty, at least with reasonable confidence—that don’t depend on our particular micro-sect or lock us into haggling over our beloved denominational minutiae. There will be more and less convincing arguments. Maybe we can reason together about God if we start from the world we all know we live in.
A guy can dream.
Love,
Spencer
 | A guest post by
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I think that it is impossible to know when God’s hand is visible enough to see, but I can count in my life many circumstances that should not have turned out as well as they did. How many “near misses” while driving, while working or at home, in the kitchen, the yard, going down steps, could have turned out disastrously? I believe in guardian angels, and some of them are exhausted, wearing sweats and track shoes to keep their wards out of danger. My father’s was certainly glad to see him, and I’m sure, greeted him by using the Terminator 2 line “I need a vacation.” Do they account for miracles? Many are too mundane, but some instances certainly count. As Trump said, “I shouldn’t be here”. I can say this about myself, my second daughter, my first daughter, my wife, who were all in near-death moments (severe auto accidents, childbirth, lymphoma, etc). I do see the hand of God in all this. Good engineering, skilled physicians, the right medication, all at work as well. I have always believed that a good physician is a tool of Providence, and should be a self-sharpening tool as well. That is part of the responsibility of a physician or any health care worker. True in many fields. The engineer who built the car that kept my daughter safe had a really good day when he designed that car. Hand of God, hard work, inspiration, dedication to the best that he can do? What’s the difference?
I cannot judge what is a miracle, but I have lived a life filled with the miraculous. I intend to continue doing so until I meet my guardian angel, and his Boss, and find out whether he also had to have sweats and track shoes.
The iconic photo is not a perfect union, but it is a union trying to stay with its better angels.