Ex-President Donald Trump is lucky. That is the bottom line . . . he is lucky. On Saturday, July 13, 3034 he survived an assassination attempt upon his life at the hands of twenty-year-old Thomas Matthew Crook at a political rally at Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The assassin missed his mark by centimeters, grazing Trump’s ear. The shooter did strike three other people, critically wounding two and killing one. With Trump he missed. The Secret Service sharp shooters did not. Crook was killed with a single shot to the head. The man killed was not so lucky. The two individuals who were wounded were not so lucky. Crook was not lucky. Trump was lucky.
Yet it is being called a miracle . . . divine intervention. As a person of faith, obviously different from those who are calling the “near miss” a miracle, this is offensive. And I wish they would quit calling it a miracle and say it for what it is . . . luck.
If people could let sleeping dogs lie, I would not be so offended. But they can’t . . . not even Trump can drop it. At a recent political rally in Bozeman, Montana—just up the road two hours from where I live—they were still harping on the miraculous intervention. The Billings Gazette reported: “Multiple people told Montana Free State News Bureau that they believe Trump was saved from the assassination attempt by God. Trump said the same on stage.” Trump stated at the rally, “For those of you that don’t believe in God, I believe there’s only one reason that could’ve happened.” The article goes on to say: “Sunam Jang, 27, who traveled from South Korea to attend these rallies across the U.S., said that the near miss ‘can’t be explained any other way than God,’ a sentiment echoed by multiple rallygoers.” (August 11, 2024, Billings Gazette newspaper)
For whatever reasons, the assassin missed. Could have been, as Trump has stated, the fact that he turned his head to look at a chart when the trigger was pulled . . . and it missed him and grazed his ear. Trump buys that . . . as he stated at the rally in Bozeman: “By the way, the border chart? I love that chart. I’m here because of that chart. I’m gonna sleep with that chart tonight.” (Billings Gazette, August 11, 2024, newspaper) Could be that the shooter was a poor shot . . . his other attempts were way off the mark resulting in an innocent individual being killed and two wounded. Obviously, he was not a trained sniper like the Secret Service member who shot him in one shot. Could be a miracle, but I doubt it because the pieces of the meaning of “miracle” do not fit together to complete the deal. No, it was just plain old luck.
As a pastor I have always viewed a “miracle” as a revealing of the Holy . . . revealing of God . . . a revealing of a Higher Power. It is not what happens in a particular situation—no matter how extravagant it might be, but that the Holy is revealed to the receiver of the gift and those who are witnessing the event. That is the first part. The second part is that something changes in the one who receives the miracle and those who witness it . . . their lives change. Consider the miracles in the New Testament of the Bible:
The great haul of fish (Luke 5:1-11)
Jesus casting out an unclean spirit (Mark 1:23-28)
Jesus healing a leper (Mark 1:40-45)
Raising the widow’s son from the dead (Luke 7:11-18)
Stilling the storm (Matthew 8:23-27)
Curing the paralytic (Matthew 9:1-8)
Healing the blind men (Matthew 9:27-31)
Curing the woman afflicted for 18 years (Luke 13:10-17)
With each of the miracles around Jesus, the Holy was revealed . . . the presence of the Holy was made aware . . . it was the Holy that makes it all possible and the Holy is seen. Having seen the Holy at work, people are changed . . . their lives change . . . they act differently, live differently, speak differently, they are different. This completes the miracle. It comes full circle. That is a “miracle”.
At first, I was willing to consider the “miracle” aspect of what happened to Trump. Maybe God did intervene . . . made the shooter miss . . . spared Trump’s life. It would certainly fit the story being thrown around by the Christian National movement that deems the Holy using whatever means is necessary to restore the nation to Christianity (their form, of course) . . . even a decrepit and immoral individual like Trump. Trump was quiet following the attempt and swore that he had changed his campaign goals and was now focused on uniting the nation. That gave me some hope. I was willing to give the man the benefit of doubt. That lasted about five minutes into his speech to the Republican National Convention before he was back to his spewing of hatred, belittlement, and nastiness. Nothing had changed. It was the same old Trumpster . . . weird and unhinged.
There was no “miracle” that day in Butler, Pennsylvania. People can weave the events of that day into a “miracle” if they want to, but it was not a “miracle”. Trump was lucky. Plain and simple—lucky. What has happened is the evolution of “pia fraus” or “pious fraud”. This Latin term is used to describe fraud in religion or medicine. A pious fraud is the faking of an event (miracle) to justify the means—in this case, building upon the idea that this individual is the chosen vessel of God to redeem the United States of American back to its Christian Godliness. It is a deceptive play on the beliefs and faith of individuals to pull them into the desires and wants of the one twisting the truth. It is a game . . . a nasty game.
If Trump had changed his tune . . . changed his actions . . . stopped the name calling . . . told the truth . . . changed his life . . . well, I might have bought the “miracle of Bethel”. But he didn’t. Nothing changed. It is the same old, same old Trump. If it had been a “miracle” we would see it as a revelation of the Holy and all that the Holy represents and desires for creation. This was no “miracle” . . . this was pious fraud. Unfortunately, by the record, something Trump knows much about.
Trump was lucky. This was no “miracle” . . . no intervention by God. It was plain old dumb lucky, and Trump was the recipient. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Miracles reveal the Holy . . . miracles change people . . . and in this nothing changed. Yup, dumb luck. That is what it was.
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