It seems like I’m constantly trying to come to an understanding or at least a settled position on how God involves himself in human affairs. The Trump shooting brought that to the surface again, simply because it couldn’t be scripted -- it felt beyond coincidence. Also, many people of faith, including people that I see as nuanced and intelligent began claiming that it was almost beyond question, an act of God (Ben Shapiro, for instance).

I’ve been all over the board over the years from “there’s no understanding God’s involvement” to determinism (more early in my Christian life), to compatibility, meaning that paradoxically God’s sovereignty and free will aren’t mutually exclusive. And I’ve also thought, maybe more now than ever before, that free creatures make the moves and God occasionally involves himself to direct history to his ends.

One other thing to think about is the ramifications behind saying that God is not involved, or that you can never interpret or intuit God’s actions in the world. These assumptions leave our relationship with God very impersonal and knowing or interpreting his involvement in our lives almost impossible. As people of faith, even the most skeptical of us, can attest to some event or some experience of the transcendent that to deny that it was personal contact with a loving God might completely shipwreck any faith we have. I also believe that there is some connection between meaning and the personal. To deny that God acts in the world or is acting in the individual’s life, in a sense is to deny that life has a direction and that life therefore has personal meaning. No human really lives that way. So that brings us back to the conundrum, does God involve himself in human affairs and can we intuit that involvement and even “interpret” it at times?
Let me lay out what I believe are the four options at hand for understanding God’s involvement:

• Option 1. God determines every event and all of history.
• Option 2. A deistic view in which God creates the world and then simply lets human free will play out. (These two represent the extremes.)
• Option 3: any type of compatibility view in which God’s sovereignty and free will are not mutually exclusive. The most popular of these is likely the “middle knowledge” explanation.
• Option 4: Let’s call this the “God as a highly informed chess player” view. In this view God will determine by a series of limited actions on his part (who knows how often he intervenes?) that all things work to good and to his ultimate ends but at some level he submits himself to human free will and to the physical laws of nature. (Somewhere on this scale is where I’ve personally landed. Whether or not it philosophically holds water I don’t know, but it makes the most sense of real life and of the narrative of Scripture for me.)

This is how I see things given everything I’ve said above. It is possible that we saw a “chess move” when Trump was shot at. I think God opens the veil on reality and human history occasionally so that those who “believe” can see (eyes to see and ears to hear). But those who choose not to believe can stay in their unbelief. In other words, God does not coerce. One objection is: if God is acting in the world, why does he not save other people or stop this or that atrocity? We don’t know, except to say that God allows most free choices and their associated consequences to play out, but we also know, as stated above, that to say God never acts is to remove all meaning in human life and basically all thought of God being loving and personal. So to me, it’s better to believe that God knows best and to both trust that we can see him acting at times but also trust that we don’t understand why he does everything he does.

Of course, this gets to another question regarding morality and goodness. My explanation at this point in my life is that God’s truth and goodness is analogous to us swimming in the ocean. His goodness is like the force of the waves. He is both resisting evil and causing everything good that ever happens. When we choose truth and goodness, we are acting with God. This is why Jordan Peterson says something to the effect that “if you find yourself constantly running into obstacles you are likely directing your life at the wrong thing.” I believe another thing that takes place is that as you follow the truth, being able to see “the hand of God” becomes more accessible and apparent. I also believe that in God’s love and grace when we are in extreme distress or difficulty that God often reveals himself because we need that to keep moving forward in the truth at those times. This occurs even if there is tragedy that God “could” have prevented. Our faith must be exercised in a bifurcated manner, we trust that God knew best and allowed the tragedy but also trust that his “message” of grace to us is both real and loving. This is obviously very difficult. God is both compassionately feeling our pain and at the same time allowing difficulties because of the consequences of allowing for the free nature of human beings. All this is our experience as parents, especially of adult children. An adult child can free us to help them when they are acting wisely but when they are headed in a direction that will harm their future, we allow consequences to have their way. We also don’t save them from all difficulties, even when they are living wisely, because we know their character is more important than avoidance of pain.

So did we see an act of God in the shooting of Trump? Maybe, and I’m even willing to say yes and hold it lightly. Why do I think it was God, you ask? Because the power of evil is strong and on full display on the world stage right now and maybe Trump, with all his flaws, is acting in truth the best he knows how. Maybe God is honoring that. Maybe God is giving people of faith some confidence that He is still involved. I believe God is very subtle if He does reveal himself. I also believe sinful and confused mankind can misinterpret His message. Either way, I hope that there is meaning in this life and I’ve come to the point, because of all my own personal experiences, that I must believe that there are times that I can say with relative confidence, ”that was God and I saw it.”

Image: Cima da Conegliano