What if God is a Republican? An agnostic’s lament
Republicans are claiming divine intervention saved Trump — what if they’re right? Illustration by Forward Graphics
Headnote: A version of this essay was first published in Etgar Keret’s Substack newsletter, Alphabet Soup. It was translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen.
TEL AVIV — I’ve been thinking a lot about God lately. What probably sent me down this theological rabbit hole was former President Donald Trump’s almost-miraculous survival of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and the supernatural explanations of this offered by Trump and his supporters.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas claimed that God tilted Trump’s head the moment the shot was fired. Charlie Kirk, the founder of a right-wing group called Turning Point USA, said that God, just like a Marvel character, created a gentle breeze that diverted the bullet off its course. The victim himself did not go into technicalities, merely stating that at the time of the attack, God was there with him on the stage.
These claims of divine intervention can be easily dismissed; after all, former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also survived assassination plots, and none of them attributed this to intervention by a higher power. But what if Trump and his people are right and God really was there on the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania — yet chose to be somewhere else when Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Yitzhak Rabin were assassinated?
The obvious answer is that the Lord works in mysterious ways and the human mind cannot fully comprehend God’s reasonings. But what if that’s … wrong? What if God is, quite simply, a Republican? What if, somewhere in the folds of His robe, there’s a MAGA pin? What if He sees all things but the thing He likes seeing most is Fox News?
In biblical stories that did not take place in the most liberal of times, we find that God often brought up abstract causes like integrity and justice in his conversations with the prophets and kings. But when it comes to taking a position on basic issues like slavery, women’s rights or upholding democracy, He preferred to keep his mouth shut and seemed fine with oppressive dictatorships.
If I try to imagine God’s reaction to talk of climate change, I see Him making a sour face and condescendingly advising us to focus on what we’re good at and leave the planet’s maintenance to Him.
In other words, if God suddenly appears in front of me in a burning bush, breaks through a cloud, or pops up on Facebook Live, I’m afraid that He and I will probably disagree about pretty much everything.
And then things’ll get awkward. On the one hand, it would be very silly to argue with the omniscient, omnipotent entity that created me. On the other, if that entity promoted misogynist, racist, homophobic, discriminatory values, then — Creator of the World or not — I think I’d have trouble getting on board. Not even divine support of Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could make me vote for them, and the whole dispute might end in tears — or in hell.
The last thing I want to do is get into a fight with my Creator, and so tonight I will pray — agnostically but fervidly — that there is no God. Or, that there is one, but He’s the old-school type: less political and controlling, more ethical and vaguely well-meaning. The God we all pictured when we were kids: chill, well-meaning, and uninterested in picking fights on Twitter.
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