In his inaugural address the current President of the United States of America said that he had been ‘saved by God to make America Great again.’ President Trump believes that he avoided death by assassination because God required him for that specific purpose.
Three things are implicit in this statement, one of which is profoundly true but the other two are built on shaky foundations. American greatness is a human construct and the deliberate intervention of God to bring it about can be argued. The argument requires answers to other puzzling questions about God’s intervention, or not, in human mortality. We are ill-equipped to provide those answers because we are not God. It is, however, right that people of faith in Jesus Christ can justifiably claim to be saved.
The salvation purchased for us all because Jesus died for us is unmerited on our part and the result of God’s Grace. That is hard to square with grandiose, self-important claims of any sort. Today’s excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15-20) says something similar in a related context. His warning was not about puffed-up leadership rhetoric but false prophets.
False prophets in every age have created harm by their incorrect spinning and twisting of divine truth to the point where it becomes dangerous. False prophets make claims and may gain a following. Political leaders make claims to espouse a cause. Dividing truth from falsehood is not easy until we consider the focus of the anticipated outcome.
God gave us immortal souls and saved them through Jesus Christ to worship him endlessly and eternally. I struggle to see any link between that and pompous home-grown prophesy, nor, indeed, with mortal interpretations of greatness. Let us leave human endeavour at every level to the usual rules of mortality and trust God for immortal eternity.
A prayer
God, eternally gracious, grant us the faith to rely on you for our immortality and to follow the guidance you give us to live well our mortal span. May our focus be your worship and our goal your glory, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.