In a satirical piece on a miraculous splitting of a river to allow a group of God’s favorites to cross on dry land, Mark Twain remarks on the disastrous consequences of this wondrous act on those living upstream as the stopped-up waters overflow their banks, flood their fields and wash away their homes. One person’s miracle may be another person’s disaster.
I recalled this passage in one of Twain’s later writings when I heard that some of Donald Trump’s followers were attributing the near miss of the assassination attempt on the former president last Saturday evening to divine intervention. A number of commentators have already responded that if one believes that the Almighty intervened on behalf of Donald Trump, why couldn’t He at the same time have stopped the bullet that killed Corey Comparatore, the volunteer fire chief, who died while shielding his family from the hail of bullets. Once one starts down that path there are truly too many innocent victims to count who have not been protected by “divine intervention” and were not shielded from vicious attacks in schools and in houses of worship, in shopping malls, in theaters and nightclubs and wherever else malevolent actors have gotten their hands on deadly weapons. One mentions Sandy Hook and Uvalde and thinks of the innocent, precious lives of children destroyed and one recalls the countless other sites where the failure was not attributable to any failure on God’s part, but was purely a case of human evil.
Prayer and religious faith may give us strength and comfort in difficult times, but they don’t change the course of nature. Righteous people sometimes suffer from grave illness, are victims of natural disasters and of human acts of destruction, intentional or accidental. By the same token, people whom we would characterize negatively may live “charmed lives,” and “miraculously” avoid death and disaster. Maybe you believe that we all will face a final judgment in the next world and all will be set right then, but meanwhile we live in this world and we know all too well that the rabbinic statement “ein somchim al ha-nes” “don’t depend on miracles” is all too true. We are living through difficult times as a nation and particularly as Jews wherever we live.
Whatever your views are of the candidates for president or for other offices and their policy proposals, all decent people must whole-heartedly condemn the resorting to violent means to try to change the political reality of the moment. As President Biden urged we should all unite around the proposition that acts of violence should never be condoned. In spite of various attacks or attempted acts of terror that we have witnessed in recent years, we must condemn them from wherever they come and reaffirm our faith in the decisions of voters in free elections that determine the future course of our country. That faith has been greatly tested in the past several years by the lies of those who refuse to abide by the decisions of past voters and who have instigated violence against their opponents as well as against those who may be simply neutral facilitators of our democratic institutions.
The failure of our legislative bodies to enact laws setting reasonable limitations on the purchase and ownership of deadly weapons is an ongoing plague that puts us all in the crosshairs of some deranged actor who can easily obtain an assault weapon. The absurd perversion of the Second Amendment to the Constitution by the courts has elevated the right to own a gun over any other right we have to live in safety and security. What about those inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do they take a backseat to the rights of gun ownership?
More frightening than the threat of the assassination of political leaders though are the very real threats to democracy and our American way of life posed by the proposals and manifestos issued by extremist elements in our country. These are people who hope to gain power to implement their repressive agendas and establish an autocracy in place of our democratic values and institutions. They exploit prejudice and xenophobia to gain followers who may be blinded to their true agendas by their rhetoric. Voters need to take a closer look at what is actually being proposed and not be swayed by candidates who excite them or by rhetoric that attempts to obscure the true designs of their authors. We cannot allow this country to be ruled by those who resort to violence to get their way. It is essential that we educate ourselves to make informed choices at the ballot boxes. We affirm “ballots over bullets,” but those ballots should not be votes for hatred, prejudice, and repression, but should reflect the values on which this country was established.
We pledge allegiance to “one nation under God” and we proclaim even on our currency “in God we trust.” Those are nice sayings but if we truly believe in them, we need to take a much closer look at what our religious teachings actually say about the way we treat other people: love of neighbor, love of the stranger, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for those in need. Our constitution guarantees freedom of religion. If we are looking for divine providence, it doesn’t come from imposing sectarian beliefs on others, but by acting in accordance with the highest values of every faith. Those are the kinds of values which should be enshrined in the platforms of all political parties and the kind of society we all hope to live in.
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