A line of thought recently popular with conservative Christians, particularly Evangelicals but also traditional Catholics, is that Donald Trump’s rise was ordained by God. Proponents of this view rejoice that, as they see it, God heard the prayers of his people and in his mercy condescended to bless them with a leader who would revive our country’s faith and morals and arrest the culture war of secular elites against traditional Judeo-Christian values.
There is a place for such thinking out loud in the Christian blogosphere, but those who advance their theory that God intervened in the election of Trump fail for the most part to grapple with the complicating biblical truth that God chastens whom he loves (Hebrews 12) and that he may judge and punish us by giving us exactly what we ask him for (1 Samuel 8). A second complicating truth for hard-identity Christians is that, while human events are indeed influenced by spiritual powers, not all spiritual powers are of God (Ephesians 6).