Did God save Donald Trump's life from the assassin's bullets because he wants him to be the next president of the United States? Donald Trump thinks so.
Speaking to Dr. Phil on Tuesday, he argued that he should have died on that stage in Butler, the odds of his surviving being "20 million to one." If he hadn't turned his head at that exact moment just the exact amount he did, if several other unlikely things hadn't happened, the shooter would have got him. His gun-owning sons explained to him that "It's a guaranteed shot for a bad shooter ... like sinking a one-foot putt."
The only explanation he can imagine for all this luck is that God protected him to make sure he returns to the White House. He took the wrong lesson from his near death experience.
Some great power
Dr. Phil asks him why was he spared. "There had to be some great power," Trump said, "because you just can't say, millions to one. ... I shouldn't be here with you."
Dr. Phil then asks, "Is there a purpose? Is there a reason you think you were spared?"
"Well, the only thing I can think is that God loves our country and he thinks we're going to bring our country back," Trump explained. "He wants to bring it back, it's so bad right now what's happening, when you look at crime, the horrible things that are happening inside our country." He could solve the problems quickly.
"It has to be God," he continued. "I mean, how can you say it's luck when it's, you know, (spacing out and emphasizing the words) 20 million to one?"
He claimed that the Democrats have so rigged the election against him that his winning "would really serve to say that there's some incredible power up there that wanted me to be involved in saving — and maybe it's more than saving the nation, maybe it's saving the world."
If he'd remained president, he said, Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine and Hamas wouldn't have attacked Israel. The world would be a better and safer place.
Trump isn't a Christian in any useful sense, as I've written. I don't expect him to understand the very tangly theological questions of why God does what he does in the world.
I do expect him to know enough about God — if he's going to claim his favor he should know something about him — to know that he has no good idea why God does what he does. "How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out," as the Apostle Paul put it.
God has his reasons
The candidate ought to know that the great and incredible power up there he invokes is way, way too big for a mere mortal to know why he (or it) has done what he's done, or seems to have done. He should know how presumptuous it is to claim God as a campaign supporter.
There are lots of possible reasons God might have saved Trump's life — if he did, and the religious believer is not bound to believe that even very high odds show divine intent — other than wanting him to be president.
What if God did save Trump's life, but saved him because he wants the Democrats to win, knowing that a replacement candidate might beat Kamala Harris? Maybe he wants the Trump-led Republicans to get beaten so badly they'll stop assuming he's on their side or see that they could be a better party than they are.
Maybe he sees that it's so bad right now what's happening that America needs the Democrats' policies, not the Republicans'. (It's at least arguable — I would argue it — that on most matters the Democratic positions come closer to the body of Catholic social teaching than do the Republican positions.)
Perhaps God doesn't care much about which candidate wins the election. He certainly lets people make their choices, even when they make very bad choices. That leads to a more interesting possibility, sadly one the candidate didn't think of.
What if God saved Trump's life to encourage him to change? To shock him into looking at himself and seeing his sins and failings and deciding to correct them and become a better man? Perhaps he does so love our country that he wants the man who might be running it for four years to be a man of much more virtue than he is now.
Who knows? In any case, the last is the lesson Trump should have taken from his near-death experience. It should have made him reconsider his life, not decide that God specially favors him because he can save the world. That's the most dangerous belief a politician can hold.
Beyond us
Donald Trump, to his credit, doesn't completely believe he knows what God is doing. He seems to be, perhaps because he almost died, a little more thoughtful than we expect. Later in the interview, Dr. Phil asks him, "So you think you're meant to take those challenges on?"
"I don't know," Trump said, shaking his head. "I don't know. In thinking about it, it's beyond any of us, I guess, to know that." For his sake, and the country's, I hope he thinks more deeply about this and gives up any idea that God wants him elected.