Sorry Rick Perry, Trump is not the ‘chosen one’ (opinion)

This notion has been going around the administration like a strange virus. Trump’s former press secretary, Sarah Sanders, saw God’s hand in picking Trump, as did Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was asked by a Christian Broadcasting Network interviewer: “Could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?” Pompeo’s reply: “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” Really? And Trump sits in the White House because God is worried about the Ayatollah?

This may sound, to many, if not most, people a bit crazy. But evangelical Christians generally believe that God intervenes in the world on a daily basis, deciding, for example, who wins the football game on Saturday, who falls off the bike and who doesn’t, or who gets elected to public offices and who must go home and sulk. (My father was a Baptist minster, so this kind of thinking is familiar.)

In this way of thinking, the same God who put, say, despots in power, for reasons not knowable to us, also put Trump in power, for reasons equally unknown. Putin and Trump, Obama and Netanyahu, even the Ayatollah, are presumably the “chosen ones,” depending, it seems, where your loyalties lie. So one just bombards heaven with prayers, asking for God to land on your side, not theirs.

But let’s consider Perry and Mr. Trump: it goes without saying that Trump would seem a peculiar choice on God’s part, given that he hasn’t shown much inclination to revere the meek, to help the poor, to withhold judgment against his enemies. Jesus, you may recall, asks us to curb our anger, not even to hold a grudge. He tells us not to store up treasures on earth, and declares one cannot serve two masters, God and money. In everything, we should treat others as we wish ourselves to be treated. Does this remind you of …Trump?

These are just the most obvious teachings of Jesus, and presumably God would want someone in the White House who exemplifies his ideals if he were in the business of choosing this one over that.

Perry elaborated in colorful detail: “King David wasn’t perfect. Saul wasn’t perfect. Solomon wasn’t perfect. And I actually gave the President a little one-pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago.”

Certainly mainstream Christians like myself find the dodge that Perry describes appalling as an argument, believing that a President should at least display some minimal level of decency and a respect for Christian values.

So what is God, according to Perry, doing? Putting a range of types in power, some ghastly, others inspired? Should there not be some genuine humility in leaders, a sense that they recognize their own limitations? Should they not admit — and not repeat — their failings? Make penance? Wouldn’t a proper religious view of providence expect this? “Humility,” as T. S. Eliot once said, “is endless.”

At bottom here is that fundamental question posed by Rick Perry’s “theology.” Does God intervene in day-to-day human activities?

A few questions follow naturally from this. Is prayer really intended to be about persuading God to do us a political favor? Did the Creator just create the world and leave us to it?

I don’t have any easy answers, and it worries me to see evangelicals who do. There is a deep mystery here that precludes the arrogance implied in Rick Perry’s stance. We just don’t know what the Divine has in mind.

In my experience, a deep relationship with God is the most important thing in life, and prayer is the heightened activity of the heart and mind in deep listening mode. And this has nothing whatsoever to do with picking the occupant of the White House — unless, in the case of Mr. Trump — God is testing us for reasons we can’t really understand.