There are questions that mankind has always been seeking answers to, not only through reason and argumentation but through intuition, faith, or direct experience. One of them concerns miracles. Christians believe that the Almighty God communicates with humans in various ways, one of which is through particular events in history or in the present. To be sure, believing that a specific event is actually “a message from Above,” or a miracle, is a personal decision for each individual.

We believers know well that from a Christian perspective the understanding of God’s will can be nuanced and is often viewed as both accessible and mysterious. In other words, you cannot treat what you believe in like something taken from Walmart: chosen, paid for, packaged, and brought home. You cannot take the things we believe in and put them in your pocket: the moment you pronounce their names they escape you because in most cases they belong to the realm of symbols, which by nature allude to something that is hidden, that is elusive. Therefore, for one thing, it is useless to counter our statements from a rationalistic or positivistic standpoint. What purpose do self-referential objections and counter-objections serve? Nobody wants to convince anyone: it would be futile and senseless.

Just recently many top Republican officials were embracing divine intervention -- “the hand of God” -- to help explain how former president Donald J. Trump survived the recent assassination attempt. “The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn [my head] but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount,” Trump himself said. He also credited “luck or God” for saving him from would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’s bullet.

Understanding God’s specific will for individual situations can be particularly challenging. There is an acknowledgment that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than human ways and thoughts:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts…” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

This means that certain aspects of God’s will may remain mysterious and beyond human comprehension. In summary, while for Christians God’s will can be understood through Scripture, prayer, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is also an acceptance of the mystery and sovereignty of God. This balance of knowing and not fully knowing requires faith and trust in God’s ultimate goodness and plan.

Can we take for granted that we Christians, in today’s Western world, are actually free to believe whatever we want to believe? Are we allowed, for one thing, to believe that Donald Trump “survived by the grace of God,” without being massacred by the media and the cultural Establishment, and labeled as a danger or a threat to society? Unfortunately, the answer is no. All in all, Christians are barely tolerated and treated as de facto second-class citizens who must refrain from talking about their faith and what it teaches in order not to be laughed at and ridiculed -- at best -- or regarded with suspicion or contempt. As an example of this Zeitgeist was last Friday’s opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games with its drag queen-themed parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Independent journalist Kyle Becker said on X that “The opening ceremony was filled with transgender mockery of the Last Supper, the Golden Calf idol, and even the Pale Horse from the Book of Revelation. The Olympics has made it clear that Christian viewers aren’t welcome.”

Luck or God? Trump’s statement was cautious, but “open.” He showed statesmanlike wisdom. We ordinary citizens and Christians can afford to go a little further. Personally and honestly, I feel like believing that the world witnessed another miracle performed by God on July 13, 2024. I believe that God spared Ronald Reagan and St. John Paul II for a reason. Likewise, God spared Donald Trump for a reason. “If you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday,” Sen. Tim Scott told the cheering crowd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on opening night of the GOP convention, “you better be believing right now! Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the alpha and the omega!” I couldn’t agree more.

We should not be intimidated by the Zeitgeist. Jesus Christ is Lord in our lives.

Samuel Robert Piccoli is a blogger and the author of several books, among them Being Conservative from A to Z (2014) and Blessed Are the Free in Spirit (2021). He lives in the Venice area.

Image: Samuel Colman