If God were a just God, who created everyone, then it seems weird that god would choose some people over others. Or, put it another way, a just God would not violate the basic principle of justice by favoring some over others. Doesn’t that make sense, even if you are a believer?
You may think that only believers should talk about God, but when some use their theology to do so much harm in the civic sphere, I don’t think we can leave theology up to them. We all have a stake in the ideas that enter the civic realm. So, I would like to engage in what I call a “Post-Christian theology.” It’s “post-Christian” because it moves beyond the Christian ideology that God has chosen some over others to carry out God’s work.
It's important to bring this up because some of Trump’s followers believe that God has chosen him to become President of the United States. They see confirmation of this belief when he turned his head to miss the bullet that was aimed at him.
Now, if we lived in the 1st century and were tribal members, we might have assumed that our God would protect us, especially the leaders of our tribe. Actually, that’s what tribal gods did. Living in the 21st century, however, where we understand justice as respecting the human dignity of each person, it doesn’t make sense to think that God would choose some over others. So even if you believe that God turned Trump’s head when the bullet whizzed by, God would have done the same for anyone else.
If we want to move toward a climate of justice, we need to affirm the idea of a just God who does not choose Christians over Jews, Israelis over Palestinians, or Trump over Harris. Who has been chosen? No one, or we could say everyone. Any God worth having, in other words, would never violate basic principles of justice.
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