Does God Intervene in History or Presidential Elections?

This question of teleology at a human historical level might be regarded from numerous vantage points. Physical determinism from initial boundary conditions of the Universe would seem to logically follow if the Universe were isolated from anything outside of its expanse. We may have no assurance of that-energy may be added to or taken from the Universe at any time one might think as reasonably as the opposite opinion. The Universe itself may have started proximally as a quantum unit of scale; there is no indication that once begun it must remain so.

Roman 13:1 “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”-the Apostle Paul writing a letter to the Romans during the reign of Nero. Later, the Roman Emperor Constantine would declare Christianity the State religion of the Empire.

Hebrews 11-3”Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

The Apostle Paul has informed us that politicians are workers of the will of God existing in the world plan, yet Paul has also informed us all of the willingness of God to work in all of our lives. We read in the letter to the Ephesians in chapter two of the nature of human experience in the world;

E2_1”And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2-2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past fulfilling the desires of our flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."

We may discern in the above passage the possibility that the teleology of the world may have a different, branching course from the teleology of the saved.

E-2-8 “For by grace are we saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; lest any man should boast: it is the gift of God.

E-2-10”For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

E-2-18”For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.”20”And we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”

E4-4”There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;5 One Lord, one faith and one baptism,6 One God and Father of all, and through all, and in you all.”

We learn here of challenges to the body politick as well as to the church of Christ…

E12”For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Romans 9-22”What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory."

St. Matthew 20:25”Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.26 But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister; 27 And whosoever shall be chief among you, let him be your servant.”

In history many political leaders have believed themselves divine-some had themselves worshipped and made it a death penalty to fail to do so. Today we feel those people were full of crap and resist that sort of pressure as ridiculous if it ever occurs even a little. Democracy requires good servants and ministers rather than outsourcers of jobs and cronyism in the political leadership class. We find tiresome anyone’s claim to be a gift from God even if he is so because it’s nearly impossible to believe or find credible proof of. Good political works provide good political opinion poll ratings instead of good p.r. propaganda.

Even so we can believe in God and that God acts on history if He likes. Though with omniscience and omnipotence it might be redundant to expect Him to change anything from the way it will be anyway. God’s will was perfect to start. We ask for His help in correcting our environmental and ecospheric use mistakes as well as other free will caused human problems often turning out to be some kind of sin.

Just Jesus Christ was the authorized Son of God, Christians believe. His act in history appearing as mankind’s savior was the only requisite political intervention for true salvation-now we have to discover ways to keep good Christianity from becoming bad politics.

We know that within our human lifetimes and personal experience that the laws of nature seem to flow on at a regular rate with its fine-tuned physical constant values seemingly unchanged. Taxes may vary and government fiscal competence to adapt to challenges may fluctuate leaving citizens stranded in poverty or set on the summit of wealth, and we know that the Bible explains that governments are tools used by God-so in a democracy the faithful should elect the smart, wise, just and beneficial to its high political offices in order to make out voter electorate roles as much in the image of God’s perfect goodness as we can. We must wonder how, given human failings and the selection of bad governments over history even unto the present as not quite a rule but not so exceptional either, God might intervene in human affairs to change government leadership in a right direction that would actualize His purpose for human destiny.

In some way we might expect God to act quantitatively in changing human social personnel and political directions in a way similar to quantum mechanics and the various energy content values of atomic nuclei and of electrons flying around them. It would be easier if we could know that the Creator would only permit so much public debt before governments flew apart or radiated citizens or subjects to new lands, or if revolutions formed in particular phase change relationship protocols that might be quantified. If that were so some people might decide that the immutable or rarely changed laws of the natural universe merely acted upon human government and politics as well as upon atoms and elements. Scientists have sought for large scale order in the universe-and actually discovered super-clusters of galaxies maybe a fifth the size of the observable universe as the largest ordered things in the universe. We tend to believe though that forces like gravity or the lambda dark energy force that may exist are discrete forces quantified in little packets phenomenally rather than having a unified large superstructure in the universe itself. That may or may not be so.

It is difficult to know what the really large scale structures of the universe are when some may be unknown. M-Theory I believe searches for extra dimensional strings and membranes as fundamental quanta in order to extrapolate a theory that explains the phenomena of nature with somewhat traditional notions about what sort of structures exist in it large and small.

Physicists and cosmologists also seem to work on developing theories about the realm of virtual uncertainty. Large scale structures of space, time, energy, mass and dimensions may exist that comprise things-in-themselves that are presently unknown or even unknowable. We see through a glass darkly, and like Moses glimpsing just a reflected fraction of the passing glory of God, some of these structures may be too large, small or just incomprehensible for a human being to encounter.

That is no reason to quit trying to understand the cosmos, the will of God as expressed in the Bible and how or why politicians can make such terrible economic conditions sometimes. The ways God acts upon history might be known as it is His will to disclose any finite portion of any infinite sequence-probably a little of that goes a long way. The 1968 U.S. Presidential race is a case in point to study profitably.

There were several good candidates in the 1968 Presidential primaries, two of whom were shot with one dying in Los Angeles. The nation’s youth were restive and protesting by the millions a war in Vietnam that had gone on for nearly a decade. Black Americans unhappy with the pace of economic and social change were burning ghettos in Detroit and Los Angeles. President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election and would die not long in the future.

The causes for the war in Vietnam have been written about much. It would be challenging to blame god for the war instead of human political activity. I will leave it at that for now, since the larger concept of politicization of teleology could be generalized to just be correction from original sin in a space-time phase shift that made human beings mortal and of finite intellectual capacity.

The probable winner of the 1968 Democratic Presidential nomination was the charismatic Robert F. Kennedy. The likely independent party nominee was Governor George Wallace. Each would have run against Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy was the easy winner in that contest if it had happened.

Yet with J.F.K. dead and Wallace critically injured and crippled for life, and with the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago besieged by a virtual riot outside in the streets by agitated youth against the war the comparatively calm, rational republican candidate seemed the very reasonable conservative choice. A fairly good Democratic candidate-Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey-the Happy Warrior-might have run well against Nixon and won the 1968 general election if not for the spectacle of the Democratic riot in Chicago. It is a little ironic that so many agitated Nixon haters helped elect Nixon indirectly to the Presidency in 1968.

Is it in such political mass confusion that one might discover the will of God to direct mankind’s political course through history on occasion? Certainly no political script-writing crew of 99 monkeys given several million years would have produced such an improbable election outcome.

President Nixon accomplished détente with the Soviet Union setting the stage for a future Gorbachev administration in part. Even President Vladimir Putin was liked by Yuri Andropov back in the day. Nixon accomplished the initial rapprochement with Red China that has continued to the present, and withdrew U.S. combat forces from Vietnam during his first administration-then he left office with the Watergate scandal and disappeared from the world political stage as America had Dick Nixon to kick around just one more time.

Some people would perhaps credit natural selection, or Darwinian evolution with the 1968 Presidential race. They might prefer to speculate that political change is not optimized in a dialectical progression of the dumb side versus the corrupt, but that no progress happens at all that isn’t incidental aggregation of structure in a discrete context. They would not deign to credit God with intervening at all to make course corrections now and then to save the human race from itself and its implicit characteristic of being unsafe at any speed even with democratic elections.

Large scale teleological structures may exist with being reducible to discrete, quantifiable units of measurement. I do not have any sort of certainty of what the actual course of God is for any election today. I believe that the electorate shouldn’t be reduced to drawing lots between bad candidates though as if one might discern God’s will in that process. The U.S.A. probably needs to do its homework well and elect high quality candidates and then thank God for the grace to do so.