On July 13, 2024, a twenty-year-old sniper named Thomas Crooks fired an AR-15-style rifle from the roof of a building around four hundred feet from the stage where Donald Trump was holding a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He killed a fifty-year-old fireman named Corey Comperatore, who died shielding his family, and critically injured two others.
The moment he fired, Mr. Trump turned his head to the right to point to a chart showing illegal border crossings. This caused a bullet to skim his right ear rather than hitting his head and killing him.
Secret Service agents tackled him to protect him, but when he stood to his feet again, he pumped his fist in the air. With blood running down his face, he shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight.” Two days later, Mr. Trump made a triumphal entry at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The day after the shooting, Mr. Trump told journalist Salena Zito, “It was the hand of God. He was there.” A month after returning to the White House, he said, “I feel, I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it.”
Yesterday’s anniversary of the shooting raises again the question: Did God save Mr. Trump’s life?
The bullet that passed through Lincoln’s hat
Let’s begin with the biblical fact that he clearly could have.
The Bible proclaims, “Kingship belongs to the Lᴏʀᴅ, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:28). Even a sparrow does not fall to the ground apart from his providential knowledge (Matthew 10:29). He sent an angel to free the apostles from prison (Acts 5:17–21) and to spare Peter from Herod’s execution (Acts 12:6–11).
The list of US presidents who survived assassination attempts is long. Among the most notable is a lone rifle shot fired in August 1864 by an unknown sniper that passed through Abraham Lincoln’s hat as he rode in the late evening, missing his head by inches. Another is the bullet fired by John Hinckley that lodged an inch from Ronald Reagan’s heart in March 1981.
However, we must obviously add that we have no biblical revelation by which to interpret the shooting in Butler or other assassination near-misses. We are left to employ what we do know of God’s character from Scripture as we seek to understand the events of that day or of any other.
Four approaches to divine sovereignty
One position is that God causes all that happens. The Lord declares, “I will accomplish all my purpose” (Isaiah 46:10). In this view, free will is only apparent but not real. As Solomon noted, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lᴏʀᴅ; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).
If this is our only approach to the events of our world, we can credit God for saving Mr. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, but we must blame him for the death of Mr. Comperatore. We can credit him when a natural disaster spares us, but we must blame him for the horrific July 4 floods in Central Texas.
The opposite position is that God causes nothing that happens. Deists believe that God created the universe as a clockmaker who then watches it run on its own, refusing to intervene in the natural world. Of course, the numerous miracles described in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation clearly teach otherwise.
A middle position is that God honors the free will he gives us, so the consequences of our sins are not his fault but ours (cf. Deuteronomy 30:19). But the Lord intervened to protect Peter from Herod, just as some think he intervened to protect Donald Trump from his would-be assassin in Butler.
Another middle position is that God allows nature to take its course, but he intervenes when necessary according to his providential purposes. Not every storm is his fault, but he can on occasion calm the storm (cf. Matthew 8:23–27).
The mystery at the heart of the issue
For reasons I explain in detail in a website article, I believe that both middle positions are correct: God honors our free will and the natural laws he created, but sometimes intervenes with both.
This leads to the mystery at the heart of the issue. If he spared Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan, why not Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre or John F. Kennedy in Dallas? If he rescued some at Camp Mystic and the other sites ravaged by the Central Texas floods, I don’t know why he did not rescue everyone else.
Nor would I expect to.
We know that “all Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16) as its authors were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). But the Bible is now a closed canon. None of us can claim revelatory knowledge with the certainty of God’s word. I cannot say with the prophets, “Thus says the Lord . . .” Nor can you.
If I claimed that God had declared audibly to me that he spared Donald Trump’s life a year ago in Butler, you would have as much right to doubt my testimony as I would if you made such a statement. I cannot think of any way the Lord could prove that it is so, either to me or to you.
“The whole reason why we pray”
Two consequences follow.
First, beware of conforming God’s will to ours.
If you are a partisan supporter of Donald Trump, you might wish I would more definitively agree with those who are convinced God spared his life miraculously a year ago. If you are a partisan opponent of the president, you might wish for the opposite. But neither opinion changes reality. God’s ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9) and not subject to our subjective wishes.
Accordingly, the purpose of prayer is not to conform God’s will to ours, but the reverse. As Julian of Norwich noted, “The whole reason why we pray is to be united into the vision and contemplation of God to whom we pray.”
A second principle follows from the first: the purpose of life is to know God and make him known.
If we pray for him to use every circumstance and challenge we face as a means to this end, he will always answer our prayers. He may take us to heaven, where we know him as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). He may heal us or spare us. He may answer us by using our suffering to draw us into greater dependence on himself (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:8–10).
And God will help us know him so we can make him known to the world. Wounded healers are the most effective healers. He comforts us so we can comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:4).
As the saying goes,
“Sometimes God calms the storm, but sometimes he lets the storm rage and calms his child.”
Both are miracles.
Will you trust him for the one you need most today?
Quote for the day:
“I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.” —Charles Spurgeon
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