An Act of God?

 

If God takes a hand in shaping events on earth for mortal man, then one might think that President Trump's assertion that God turned aside that bullet so it did not strike his head, but only his ear, may well be true.

Certainly, fans of Adolf Hitler thought God played an obvious role when an assassin placed a bomb in a briefcase case next to Hitler, and the explosion shredded the room, killed four people, but Hitler walked away with nothing more than a perforated eardrum and shredded trousers. 

Hitler's Shredded Trousers

At the time, it is easy to understand how people could have seen this extraordinary occurrence as a clear sign of divine intervention. And the next step was also understandable: If God wanted Hitler to survive, then whatever Hitler is trying to do, he is doing it with God's blessing. After all, God is protecting Hitler.

But, as President Lincoln observed in his Second Inaugural Address, "The Almighty has his own purposes." He was pondering why God would have allowed or willed the Civil war to ravage the nation, to kill so many and to destroy so much.

In the case of Hitler, drawing the conclusion God wanted Hitler to survive must mean that God blessed Hitler, might seem jumping to conclusions. After all, if Hitler had died in July, 1944, the generals who killed him would likely have tried to negotiate an end to the war, and the German Reich might have continued, the  concentration camps might never have been liberated and exposed and that final, complete destruction of the Reich might not have occurred. And how much better to see Hitler putting the gun to his own head than being dead before he ever knew what hit him?

Lincoln speculated that God might have wanted the Civil War to be so prolonged and destructive that every drop of blood drawn by the bondsman's lash (the slave driver) be paid for by a drop of blood paid for by that drawn by the sword; it may seem a harsh retribution from a vengeful God, but "The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

So, President Trump may be correct: God may be on his side. "Gott Mit Uns," read the belt buckles of the German soldiers in the great wars. 

But it may be a bit to soon to know what God really has in store for us.