Back from the Dead
Some years ago, there was a young woman in our church who, quite suddenly, got an infection that went bad and was on the brink of death. Everyone in the church was praying for her. People around the state were praying for her. She ended up dying, but the process was much longer and more trying than was initially anticipated. The first time the family was called in to say goodbye, however, she made this incredible come-back and went from end of life care to accepting visitors in a matter of days. Understandably, a number of people in the congregation began to make comments like, “Well . . . you know Martha. She’s a fighter.” After hearing a litany of such comments, a deaconess at church ascended the pulpit for the call to worship and chastised the entire lot of us. “How dare you people?” she implored. “Here we have prayed for weeks for God to spare this woman’s life . . . people all over the state are praying . . . and then, when things begin to change in the direction of our prayers, you attribute the reasonable praise to her own indomitable character? That praise is God’s and God’s alone. We ought to be thanking Him.” This was one of the all-time profoundest moments in my own personal history of church.
Back in 2012, I was not simply skeptical of a Donald Trump presidency, I was nauseous about it. I could not understand how the evangelical base was willing, nay, zealous, to vote for a man who didn’t appear to house any of the characteristics Christians ought to revere in an individual, let alone a leader. It felt like the death of the nation and the lobotomizing of the evangelical mind.
As each of the last four years passed, I marked the milestone out loud to my wife with some sort of breath-held acknowledgement that, if the presidency ended right then, we would have beaten the house: a lot of important constitutional measures preserved and advanced and no major catastrophes from Trump’s worldview-less agenda. Then, as the fourth year was rounding for home, I was forced to acknowledge that I must have been wrong about him. I must not have understood him. Or . . . perhaps he’s changed. Or . . . something else I didn’t understand. I still don’t know. I believe that this man loves America . . . the America I have learned to love. He seems to understand that without the Judeo-Christian fabric, the long-standing strengths are unattainable, even if he does not personally believe them. Dostoevsky’s warning that without the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man is an impossibility is relevant here.
It is now four days after the election and we still don’t have an officially declared president. Media outlets have successfully proven the concept of authority to be most true only in Bernaysian sense. If the media have done their job, who needs any other magistrates? The chair of the Federal Election Commission, a number of Senators and Representatives, and countless city officials in battleground states have all contributed the necessity of claims of fraudulent voting tactics being investigated. I don’t know if any of these claims are true. In this country, to have witnesses like these, and to not investigate would prove the point that the teeth of cancel culture have finally reached the jugular . . . truth is officially unfriended by America.
Every student of Scripture knows that there is a complicated relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Today I thought again about Marcia. It is true that she may have been a fighter. God may have used that in His providence and care for her. It is also unavoidable that God, however, deserves the glory and the thanksgiving.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down to us from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. - James 1:17
Trump has clearly changed over his time in office. He has changed for the better. His conduct is more subdued and his thinking is clearer. The accomplishments are staggering, when considering benchmarks in the advancement of representative democracy and capitalism. But . . . even if I could accuse Trump of being a God-fearing man, which I can’t . . . even if I could accuse him of giving credit to God for every good thing he has been able to accomplish, which I can’t . . . even if I could accuse of him of being Mike Pence, which I can’t . . . even then I would have to give the credit and the glory to God because, according to the Psalms, a God-fearing leader would be a gift from Him.
Our nation needs prayer. The media outlets have so saturated their viewers with the mantra that Biden is the president that the microscopic portions of percentage differences in battle-ground states have already been long-forgotten. If the litigations, beginning this Monday, prove to successfully identify voter fraud and the numbers change to favor Trump, the results are going to be catastrophic, due to the unilateral presentation of perception politics as reality politics by the ministries of truth. God help us. But, if the hearings find nothing, either because there was no voter fraud or because the heist was successful, Christians mustn’t lose heart. Have our prayers for Trump to win the White House outpaced our prayer for this nation to experience repentance and revival? God has promised, in His Word, that if His people will practice a true and abiding repentance, then the healing of the land will occur. A proper relationship between Church and State would require the Church to set the spiritual tone for the nation, since the Church is something like the conscience of the state and of the people. As the Holy Spirit goes, so ought we. If Biden/Harriss successfully take the office, the Church should be optimistic . . . not because they have given us any reason to hope . . . but, if we have learned anything from the Trump presidency . . . God’s movements don’t necessarily have anything to do with them. As the Westminster teaches:
God, in His ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure. - Westminster Confession of Faith 5:3
In deed, may it be so. May God either work without, above, or against this election, according to His own good pleasure; but may God work in and among His people all the more.
