In November of last year, ex-Governor of Texas, and current Energy Secretary, Rick Perry said that Trump was chosen by God to be President and do great things during an interview with FOX News.
My initial reaction (and the reaction of several people I know) was similar to George W. Bush’s reaction to Trump’s inauguration speech: “Well, that was some weirdsh*t.” Perry went on to say that Obama, too, did not get to be President without being ordained by God (presumably in that case, not to do “great things”?) and that “God’s used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect." But crazy or not, Perry’s philosophy about this is not so out of the mainstream.
This idea of God making “use” of imperfect people is hard to
get one’s mind wrapped around. What does this mean? In “choosing” Trump to be
President to “do great things” for America I assume that Perry does NOT believe
that God is making Trump do stuff (that Trump is merely an autonomous robot
that God commands to do His wishes). I also don’t think that Perry thought that
God manipulated the actions of voters to allow Trump to win the election.
So what DID he mean? I suspect that Perry is speaking the
language of a large number of believers (including friends of mine) who believe
that God is “in charge” of everything and that nothing occurs without being a
part of His plan.
I often hear this said in the context of something sad or
difficult having happened to someone. Perhaps the person gets laid off from
their employment and they say something like: “well, it is all just part of
God’s plan. I’m sure He has a better job for me around the corner! I have faith
that it is all in His hands!”
It is clearly being used to comfort the person and I can’t
say it doesn’t work. And if it makes someone feel better about the future that
is fine. But it doesn’t work for all of us. I can’t say this works for me. Why
not? Because I can’t help thinking that if God is in charge of everything and
all is part of His plan, then the Holocaust and the great Galveston Hurricane
of 1900 have to be part of that plan as well. And if that is so, of what
comfort can it be that it is part of God’s plan? If I lose my job and I say, well
it is all in God’s hands, but everything that happens is part of God’s plan,
then the next thing he might do is strike me down with a fatal flesh eating
bacteria, send a car with a drunk driver my way to kill me, or give me colon
cancer. It might be all God’s plan, but hardly comforting!
The adage that God doesn’t send you anything more than you
can handle is clearly incorrect. Lots of people get sent situations that leave
them dead or helpless. So how is this comforting?
The next step could be to say that God has a good plan for
his believers or virtuous people in general. But that is problematic too, given
the examples above. Human evil resulted in millions of deaths during the
Holocaust (man innocent and virtuous people, obviously), and nature killed
thousands in the Galveston Hurricane disaster of 1900 many of whom were
children and normal virtuous adults.
I used the Holocaust and the Hurricane of 1900 specifically
because one was so clearly a result of human choices (evil ones by the Nazis)
and the other was equally clearly an act of “nature” (and still the most
murderous natural disaster in United States history).
So between natural disasters and evil human beings causing so
much suffering in the world, the God that is in control of everything and whose
plan is being unfolded in human history just doesn’t work for me. That doesn’t
mean, however, that atheism is the only option left. I tend not to believe in
supernatural intervention into human history, but that, too, does not mean that
atheism is all that is left.
My way of getting past the Rick Perry problem is Unitarian
Universalist Gnosticism. But before I talk about how that operates for me, I
will discuss (in the next blog post) how it all relates for me to the
philosophical “Problem of Evil” and why UU Gnosticism (for me anyway) solves that too!
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