A “real-life superhero” and the pathway to sacrificial courage

Today’s news cycle is being dominated by former President Donald Trump’s announcement of J. D. Vance as his running mate, the first night of the Republican National Convention, the dismissal of Mr. Trump’s classified documents case, and President Biden’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt last night. However, I want to focus this morning on a story I don’t want us to miss before it fades from the headlines.

Corey Comperatore was an engineer, a former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company in Pennsylvania, and a lifelong volunteer firefighter. He was also a husband and the father of two daughters.

When shots rang out last Saturday at a rally for former President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, one of Corey’s daughters later described how her father reacted. “He shielded my body from the bullet that came at us,” she wrote in a social media post. “He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us.”

Corey Comperatore died defending those he loved. His daughter called him a “real-life superhero.”

“We are all on our last cruise”

Donald Trump’s near assassination illustrates John F. Kennedy’s prophetic statement: “If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.” If the person presumably better protected than anyone in our country can be in mortal danger, so are we all.

Recent celebrity deaths include sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, actress Shannon Doherty, and fitness guru Richard Simmons. Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed on this day in 1918; John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and her sister perished in a plane crash on this day in 1999. Shark attacks and the rising threat of bird flu are in the news as well.

An American Airlines flight parked at its gate at San Francisco International Airport was evacuated recently because of smoke in the cabin. Metaphorically, we’re all on that flight. Robert Louis Stevenson made a similar point:  “Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.”

According to Jesus, none of us knows when our time will come: “Always be ready, because you don’t know the day or the hour the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 25:13 NCV). However, while we cannot know the hour of our death, we can prepare for it. We can decide today that we will respond as Corey Comperatore did: with sacrificial courage and selfless love.

How can we do this?

“No more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man”

Aristotle taught: “Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

One person said of Corey Comperatore’s sacrifice: “He was a firefighter. Why am I not surprised his instinct was to put his own body in harm’s way?” I have been privileged to pastor several firefighters over the years and can testify personally to the truth of this statement.

Kurt Vonnegut agreed: “I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.” Think about it—when everyone else runs from the conflagration, firefighters run to it as quickly as they can get there, knowing they may not return.

The Greek historian Thucydides was right: “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.”

Stated succinctly: If we live for others today, we’re more likely to be willing to die for them tomorrow.

How can we do this?

“If we live, we live to the Lord”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro testified that Corey Comperatore went to church every Sunday. This is unsurprising: A longtime friend called him “a great man who loved his family fiercely and did the same with God.”

As a result, Corey found in his Lord the strength to follow his example: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Followers of Jesus know these facts to be true:

• “Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:6–7).
• “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
• “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8).

As a result, we are free to “set your mind and heart to seek the Lᴏʀᴅ your God” (1 Chronicles 22:19). We are free to live—and to die—for his glory and the common good. We are free to serve others whether or not we are served, to love them whether or not we are loved, and to live each day for our eternal reward and theirs.

St. Augustine observed:

We do not seek, nor should we seek, our own glory even among those whose approval we desire. What we should seek is their salvation, so that if we walk as we should they will not go astray in following us. . . .

If then you are good, praise is due to him who made you so; it is no credit to you, for if you were left to yourself, you could only be wicked. . . . And so, my brothers, our concern should be not only to live as we ought, but also to do so in the sight of men; not only to have a good conscience but also, so far as we can in our weakness, so far as we can govern our frailty, to do nothing which might lead our weak brother into thinking evil of us.

Otherwise, as we feed on the good pasture and drink the pure water, we may trample on God’s meadow, and weaker sheep will have to feed on trampled grass and drink from troubled waters.

The philosopher Andrew Bernstein was therefore right:

“The hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.”

Will you be a hero today?

Tuesday news to know:

• In the wake of Trump’s attempted assassination, investigators search for clues around the motive
• Trump shooting is Secret Service’s most stunning failure in decades
• NASA astronauts from Boeing’s Starliner may be stuck in space until August
• Fertility declines, tapering populations, soaring life expectancies: What the UN population report shows about us and our future on this planet
• On this day in 1945: the first atomic bomb test is successfully exploded

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do his will, waiting for the endless good which he is always giving as fast as he can get us able to take it in.” —George Macdonald

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Reflections on the attempted assassination of former President Trump

Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform TruthSocial yesterday that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” allowing him to survive Saturday’s assassination attempt. The Wall Street Journal editorial board similarly wrote, “It’s nothing short of miraculous that Mr. Trump avoided death by a literal inch.”

According to the New York Times, the picture of the bloodied former president, his fist raised, flanked by an American flag, is “already the indelible image of our era of political crisis and conflict.”

“We are living through an age of rage”

At this writing, authorities are still trying to determine a motive for the attempted assassination. The twenty-year-old alleged gunman made a $15 donation when he was seventeen to a group that supports Democratic politicians, but he was also a registered Republican.

If political rhetoric was in fact a motivating factor for the shooter, the tragedy further demonstrates the power of hateful speech to incite hateful actions.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley responded to the shooting: “We are living through an age of rage. It is not our first, but it may be the most dangerous such period in our history.” In the first attempted assassination of a current or former president in the social media era, partisan reaction and conspiracy theories swiftly illustrated his warning.

In my Daily Article Special Edition response to the shooting Saturday, I quoted a number of Democratic leaders who stated their gratitude that Mr. Trump was safe. Others, however, responded in horrific ways. For example, a Colorado state representative tweeted, “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.” (His post was quickly deleted and roundly condemned by his party’s leaders.) Some on the right were likewise quick to blame President Biden and Mr. Trump’s other critics for the attack.

“Do not speak evil against one another”

Saturday’s shooting has a larger social context. In a nationwide poll conducted last month, 10 percent of those surveyed said the “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.” A third of those giving that answer also said they owned a gun. On the other side, 7 percent of those surveyed said they “support force to restore Trump to the presidency.” Half of these respondents said they owned guns.

Words provoke actions. This is why Scripture warns us, “Do not speak evil against one another” (James 4:11), and commands us “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:2).

How you and I respond to Saturday’s shooting will significantly impact our witness in our secularized culture. Let us obey these biblical commands by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Then our light in the darkness will glorify our Lord and draw others to him (Matthew 5:14–16).

New York Times columnist David French, a conservative evangelical but also a longtime critic of Mr. Trump, responded to the shooting: “There has rarely been a better time to love our enemies, to pray for our nation, and to remember—during one of the most fraught political campaigns in generations—that each and every one of us is a human being, created in the image of God.”

A misfiring gun and a grenade that did not explode

A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service stated that direct assaults against presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates have occurred on fifteen separate occasions. Ten incumbents, including four of the previous six presidents, had been targeted. Four of the ten (and one candidate) died as a result of such attacks.

Of the forty-five individuals serving as US president, thirteen (about 29 percent) have been subject to actual or attempted assassination. This number does not include Saturday’s shooting.

Some examples of near-misses:

• Theodore Roosevelt was spared in 1912 when a steel case for his glasses and his fifty-page speech kept a bullet from striking his vital organs.
• Bullets fired at Franklin Roosevelt three weeks before his 1933 inauguration missed him, but they hit and killed the Chicago mayor standing nearby.
• On September 5, 1975, a person standing two feet from President Gerald Ford pointed a gun at him, but it misfired. Seventeen days later, a person standing forty feet from the president fired a shot at him, narrowly missing. She raised her arm again, but a former Marine dove toward her and grabbed her arm, possibly saving Mr. Ford’s life.
• The “Devastator” bullets fired at Ronald Reagan in 1981 were designed to explode on impact, but the one that struck the president likely malfunctioned because it apparently ricocheted off the door of his armored limousine before hitting him.
• An attacker threw a grenade at George W. Bush during an event in Tbilisi in 2005, but it did not explode.

These tragedies and near-tragedies, coupled with Saturday’s shooting, call us to intercede for ”all who are in high positions” (1 Timothy 2:2). Consequently, please join me in praying even more fervently for Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and others in leadership. Ask God to enable the Secret Service and others to protect them. Pray for the family of the Corey Comperatore, the man killed in the shooting, and for David Dutch and James Copenhaver, who were injured.

“Ascend above the hate”

And pray for God to use this tragedy to lead our nation past the bitterness and divisiveness of these days. Following the shooting, Mr. Trump stated, “It is more important than ever that we stand united.” Last night, President Biden used a rare Oval Office address to condemn political violence and to plead with Americans to “resolve our differences at the ballot box.”

The morning after her husband was shot, former First Lady Melania Trump released a letter in which she likewise implored our nation:

Ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships, again.

To “realize this world again,” let us begin on our knees today.

Monday news to know:

• Trump assassination attempt: former president says his rewritten GOP convention speech will call for unity
• Trump shooting: reactions from investors and analysts
• Israel seeks proof of whether strike killed Hamas military chief
• Record-breaking heat wave shifts east as millions of Americans under heat alert
• On this day in 2006: Twitter launches

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Intercessory prayer might be defined as loving our neighbor on our knees.” —Charles Bent

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The Republican Party recently released its 2024 platform, outlining its goals and priorities should the November elections go its way. While the document comprises a list of twenty promises and ten chapters that go in depth on a variety of subjects, the changes to the party’s official stance on abortion have received the most attention.

In 2016—the last time the GOP released an official platform since they chose not to do so in 2020—the issue of abortion featured prominently, with more than 700 words devoted to the topic and mentioning abortion specifically thirty-five times. By contrast, the 2024 version uses the term once and gives the subject less than 100 words of attention, stating simply:

“We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

In understanding the changes, it’s worth noting that in 2016 Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, whereas now the issue of abortion has been rightly returned to the states. Moreover, in the vast majority of elections since that shift occurred, the pro-life position has lost. We’ll discuss one of the primary reasons why that’s the case—and how it impacted the changes to the GOP platform—in a bit, but those losses have created a good bit of angst among Republicans running for office this fall.

As a result, many Republicans—former president Donald Trump chief among them—have sought to reframe the GOP’s stance on this issue to appeal to a wider range of voters. However, doing so risks losing the pro-life part of a base they’ve come to rely upon in the process.

For example, Clint Pressley—a megachurch pastor in North Carolina and the recently elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention—spoke for many when he tweeted, “I am disheartened by what’s happened in the GOP. The GOP platform may be subject to change, but God’s word is not. Southern Baptists ‘contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death’ and will insist that elected officials do the same.”

But is that the right approach?

The answer is perhaps more complicated than it would first appear.

When is it right to compromise?

In a recent article for the Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter does an excellent job of outlining the argument for why pro-life supporters should remain uncompromising on the issue of abortion. As he notes, “Central to the pro-life ethos is the belief in the inherent value and dignity of human life. The acknowledgment that life is sacred from conception until natural death undergirds the entire movement.”

He goes on to describe how the pro-life and pro-choice positions “are binary,” arguing that “Just as you cannot be a ‘little bit pregnant,’ you cannot be a little bit pro-choice. Once you support abortion in any form, you lose the right to the label of pro-life.”

Is he correct?

When it comes to personal convictions, I believe he is.

If life truly does begin at conception—and the biblical position is that it does—then abortion at any stage of pregnancy is killing a human created in the image of God and cherished by our heavenly Father. And while abortion becomes increasingly barbaric in the second and third trimesters, it is equally tragic no matter when it occurs.

At the same time, being uncompromising in our convictions does not necessarily mean that we should be uncompromising when it comes to the practicalities of fighting for life in a culture that is predominately pro-choice.

When faced with the binary decision of either supporting a woman’s right to abortion or rejecting it, 63 percent of Americans support it. However, when you parse the question by trimesters, the majority of Americans do not think abortion should be legal after thirteen weeks.

In short, when given only two options, Americans have repeatedly been pro-choice, and there is little evidence of that changing anytime soon. Recognizing that fact and adjusting accordingly is not cowardice or giving up on the unborn’s right to life. It’s political prudence.

And the reality of that situation reminds us of an even more important fact that’s become all too easy to overlook in recent decades.

The best way to be pro-life

At the end of the day, politicians aren’t going to advocate for a pro-life position until we can convince more people to be pro-life. That doesn’t happen in the rooms of party conventions or by yelling and bemoaning the state of abortion on social media. It happens by talking with the people God brings along our path and helping them to understand why life is valuable from conception to natural death. It happens by helping the moms and dads considering abortion to see that there’s another way. And it happens by being pro-life in every facet of our lives to the point that we earn the right to be heard on this subject.

And to the extent that we can see political change with abortion, the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the issue back to the states was a win primarily because it shrinks the number of people we have to convince in order to see that change take place.

Would it be great if the federal government decided to ban abortion? Absolutely. Is that likely to happen? Probably not.

The choice left to us is to decide whether we want to spend our time, energy, and resources bemoaning that fact or shift our attention to more practical ways that we can make a real difference and save lives. And while that’s not necessarily an either/or choice, far too many have placed their hopes in politicians when politicians have repeatedly shown that they don’t deserve it in this area.

So instead of wasting our time wishing our political leaders were different, ask God to help you make a difference.

Partner with a local crisis pregnancy center. Prayerfully consider adoption or support those who are called to adopt. There are a host of ways you can make a practical difference in this area, and doing so is the easiest path to seeing true change when it comes to the defense of unborn life.

How can you make a difference today?

Quote of the Day:

“There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.” — D.L. Moody

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