In 1170, King Henry II and Thomas a' Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, got into an intense argument. In the Middle Ages, the Church and the Crown had almost equal power. Either entity could arrest, try, imprison, or execute. Either could own property, confiscate property, or stand an army. Basically, Henry and Becket argued over who could do what to whom. The fact that the two men had once been good friends didn’t soften the argument any.

In one heated discussion, Becket stormed out of the throne room, and Henry uttered the fateful words, “Would someone please rid me of this pesky priest.” No one knows if he shouted those words like a command in battle or if he just muttered them sotto voce in quiet frustration. It didn’t matter what he meant, what he thought. The four knights who had been in the throne room at the time knew that they had to take it as a command and so, off to Canterbury they rode.

They found Becket kneeling before the altar in the Cathedral there, and there they hacked him to death. That Becket was subsequently canonized made little difference to the archbishop, but it did bring up the issue of whether or not the king was above the law. Hmm… where have we heard that before?

It was on the 8th of July, 2024, that our president uttered the following words:

“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate; it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,”

It was on July 13, just five days later, that Thomas Crooks did just that.

Can we prove that Old Joe

1. Knew what he was saying,

2. Realized that someone might take him up on it, or

3. Had it all planned out ahead of time?

Of course not. Not yet, anyway.

But we can begin to wrap our brains around the importance of official utterances. King Henry repeatedly denied that he had meant for his loyal knights to take him literally, but that didn’t undo anything. Becket was still dead.

Biden could claim a mulligan on the bull’s eye remark, but Corey Comperatore, a brave father, is dead, a wife bereaved, two daughters robbed of the leadership of a good man, and two severely injured patriots. To say nothing about the fact that a presidential candidate was shot. This wasn’t an “Ooops.”

We can’t say Biden caused this -- proximity is not causality. However, we have an irresponsible, mindless idiot in the Oval Office, and he’s likely to say or do anything. He might, as commander-in-chief, give an order that will set off a whole firestorm of death and destruction. We also don’t know who’s playing puppeteer. Whose words are issuing forth from Old Joe?  

No doubt Democrats and Republicans alike are hoping some legal, smooth method will “rid us of this pesky president.” The election and inauguration, however, are half a year away. A lot of mindless comments can come forth from Joe in that amount of time, and judging from the speed with which Washington gets things done these days, the 25th Amendment wouldn’t be much faster, and then we just get another empty head connected to a flapping mouth.

This may be one scenario that the Founders didn’t foresee. How could anyone foresee a nation so superficial, so stupid, so self-involved as to elect (or allow to be elected) such a person to the most powerful position in the history of the world? Did we just love Joe because he, too, loves ice cream? Were we just charmed by that rakish, crooked grin?  Were we just in awe of the job he did as vice president and of the gracious and classy First Lady? Were we just appalled at the level of prosperity and peace we had enjoyed under Trump? What?

I have heard it said that a nation gets the leadership it deserves. If that is so, let us all pray for mercy. We have squandered our fortune, destroyed our industries, miseducated our children, and locked God out of the public square. We have murdered millions of babies -- and only God knows who they could have, would have been. We have mutilated our families, our bodies, and the bodies of our children. We have castrated our laws. We don’t deserve anyone better than the Biden cartel. But we don’t deserve Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf either, and yet if we merely believe, we have all its benefits.

I believe we did see God’s mercy in action on the 13th of July. We’ll never know if that slight turn of the head was angelic interference or God’s preplanning, but I’m quite sure that this event was much more than just coincidence. We all saw God controlling history, which He does, but we’re rarely aware that’s what we’re seeing.

We do, as human beings, have free will, but there is a multitude of things God still controls, and history will proceed as He wants it to. He brought about the storm that cost Napoleon Waterloo. He guided the arrow that ripped through the eye-slot on Harold Godwinson’s helmet and made William the Conqueror. I have no idea why God wanted the French to take over England, but the deck had certainly been stacked in William’s favor.

God decides who arrives on this earth, where, and when. How is it that our brilliant and brave Founding Fathers were all alive and well-educated and gathered together in the 13 colonies at the end of the 18th century? History had never seen such an arrangement, and it produced a nation that has provided unheard-of prosperity and happiness, that has saved the world from overwhelming evil at least three times and may well do so again.

God, in His omniscience, uses our choices and decisions for His purposes even though we rarely recognize His hand in things. Even the bad choices we make, the evil we choose to do, can be used by His omnipotence for good. Thomas Crooks, for reasons that will remain his own, climbed a ladder, fired his rifle at Donald Trump and changed history -- not the way he might have wanted it to go, but that act altered the course of the election in many ways.

The world finally saw Trump as human -- not as supernaturally evil as he’s been portrayed, but as vulnerable, bleedable, and amazingly brave.

The world saw the government and its DEI policies fail horribly.

We have watched the Left do almost everything conceivable to destroy this one man, and now they’ve tried the worst -- either with malice aforethought or by irresponsibly poking the wrong bear. And this may not be the last attempt -- we need to be aware of that.

In the meantime, even though things look hopelessly dire, we can now know that God is being merciful to this nation, that help is on the way, and that, despite Old Joe’s obvious incompetence, all will eventually be well. Let us all shorten the “eventually” by being Americans together and putting aside the recklessness that has nearly devoured us. Let us stand behind the man who stood up for us, bleeding but shaking his fist in the air.

Deana Chadwell is an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College in southern Oregon. She teaches writing, logic, and literature. She can be contacted at 1window45@gmail.com

Image: Public Domain