www.theatlantic.com/politics/…
Although Christians believe that God reigns supreme over history and will direct things to their proper end, the meanings of individual events are much more difficult to discern. For this reason, Christians are not quick to attribute natural disasters as a sign of God’s judgment on a particular place. We don’t believe that one can count the number of Christians on a sporting team and then give the team with the most Christians the victory. The world is more complicated than that. We are not always sure why some people get sick and their prayers for healing are answered, and why some people get sick and die. Promising prosperity and declaring a secret knowledge about the purposes of God have always been ways to gain applause, power, and money, but they are also dangerous and potentially heretical.
If all this is true of illness and catastrophe, how much more so of a presidential election? I know that more people cast their vote for Donald Trump than for Kamala Harris, and for that reason he was inaugurated yesterday. I cannot with confidence speak about God’s intervention in the matter. I was surprised, then, to hear the invocation at the inauguration attribute the outcome of the 2024 election to God’s positive will for America, and as an occasion for praise. That strikes me as hubris because it assumes the ability to know God’s opinion on an event in history.
