Prosperity Theology Has No Place in Politics

By now, you've surely seen images such as these on the internet:

The message, of course, is that God is behind Trump. That God saved Trump from being killed. The last image is perhaps the most egregious, as here in America, we fundamentally and vehemently disagree with both autocratic and constitutional monarchies.

Still, Trump loyalists (who I consider separate from mainline Republicans) believe that God had a hand in Trump's escape from assassination and that he currently has a hand in the success of Trump's presidential campaign. It smacks of prosperity theology, and in my opinion, it's antithetical to Christ's gospel. Prosperity theology suggests that people of God will experience health and material wealth on this earth, and it implies that people who are not of God will experience the opposite––illness and poverty. So the logical conclusion, then, is that because Trump is alive, he was saved by God. And if he was saved by God, he must be a man of God. At the very least, he is the man God wants as the president of the United States.

We must ask ourselves: What about Corey Comperatore? He died in this attempted assassination. Was he not a man of God? If he was a man of God, why was he not blessed with life, as Trump was? Furthermore, where was God before the rally? Why did he not stop the gunman early in the morning? In fact, why didn't the gunman simply drop dead the night before? I suppose Trump loyalists would respond something like this: "Because God wanted us to see that he was sparing Trump's life. God wanted us to know that Trump is his anointed." You'd be hard-pressed to get a meaningful response about Comperatore's death, though.

When I was a junior in high school, a boy shot his girlfriend and then himself in a bathroom about 100 feet from my classroom. In the aftermath, a friend of mine said, "I feel so glad that she was saved. He wasn't, though, and that's too bad."

I'm so fed up with people acting like they know when God's hand is in someone else's life and when he's not. I believe in personal revelation, and I believe that individuals can feel the Holy Ghost's presence in their own lives, but to claim to know who will be saved and who won't is disgusting. To claim that God has saved one man and not another is disgusting. We absolutely cannot know for certain that God saved Trump that day. Perhaps he did. But perhaps the would-be assassin was a poor shot. Perhaps the security detail was poorly organized. Perhaps the wind picked up at just the right moment.

We've got to stop making meaning where there is none. People live through life-threatening events every day and not because God saved them for a special purpose. People die every day and not because God ignored them. Men and women of God experience heartache, disease, death, and poverty, and atheistic men and women experience joy and good fortune. The events of a person's life does not indicate what kind of person they are or were or could be. Let me say that again:

The events of a person's life does not indicate what kind of person they are or were or could be.

The outcome of the upcoming presidential election, however, will indicate something. It will indicate how many votes each candidate earned, period. It will depend on what we, the people of America, want for our country. God will not take away our agency. He will never take away our ability to choose––in this case, vote––for the person we think will be the best for the job. So did God save Trump's life? It's possible. Did he save Trump's life because he wants him as our next president? No! To do so would be in violation of each American citizen's right to choose.

*A note to my fellow Mormons: We believe that a war was fought in heaven over our agency, and in the Book of Mormon, Lehi states, "Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself" (2 Nephi 2:16). He doesn't want to choose our president for us; he wants us to make that choice. And he's not playing a game with us––trying to get us to choose who he has already divinely chosen. If he wanted Trump––or Harris––to be the next president, he'd make it a lot more obvious than something so open to interpretation. To put it in terms of prosperity theology, I'd say everyone within a 20-foot radius of Trump would've needed to die at that rally, while he was the only one left standing––untouched and without a drop of blood on his face. But even that's up for debate.