There is a risk in writing about fast-changing news. As of this writing, we do not know why a disturbed young man tried to murder the former president of the United States. He appears to have been a loner, bullied, who lashed out by climbing upon an unguarded roof about 150 yards from Donald Trump. His shot hit Mr Trump’s ear, barely missing his head, but he murdered someone in the crowd behind Mr Trump and injured others.
The Attraction Of Gnosticism
How is it possible for a civilian, not some highly-skilled foreign operative, to get a semi-automatic rifle so close to someone under the protection of the United States Secret Service? Authorities were apparently alerted to his presence with enough time to stop the attack yet they allowed Mr Trump to take the stage and failed to find and stop the murderer until after he began shooting.
The more details that emerge the more it seems that people, Christians among them, turn to a bewildering array of conspiracy theories to explain what happened. Some theories allege that factions within the American government plotted the attack. Others theorize that the shooter was under the control of a foreign adversary. Yet another, claims that, despite what we all saw and the photographic evidence to the contrary, Mr Trump was never shot at all. Of course, none of us outside of the investigation really knows what the whole truth is. It almost seems, however, that the more outlandish the theory, the more adherents it finds.
Regular readers of this space may remember that I have objected to conspiracy theories generally on the ground that they fail to account for the facts. One of the psychological attractions of conspiracy theories is the same thing that attracts people to Gnosticism: the thrill of secret knowledge, knowing something that mere ordinary people do not know. This is part of the attraction of movements like QAnon.
Most of the time, however, history is the story of improbabilities and incompetence. Lee Harvey Oswald did get into the Dallas Book Depository. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (June 28, 1914), in the streets of Sarajevo, happened because of the incompetence of the security forces. A crazed man with a gun was able to get near enough to Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968, to murder him.
People struggle to accept these realities because they imagine that there are shadowy, omnicompetent, super-powerful people pulling the strings somewhere. As a child, I was given to think that the people in government knew vastly more than we and thus, that we ought trust them implicitly. The Bay of Pigs (1961), the Vietnam War (1955–75), and a “third-rate burglary,” in the Watergate Hotel (1972), caused us to begin to doubt that the brightest and best really were worthy of such confidence.1
There are people in government agencies who know some things that the rest of us do not know. Security agencies do handle cases that never make the press, but governments are composed of finite, sinful humans who, for the most part, know about what the average well-informed voter knows. Sometimes it seems obvious that they know less. Most Americans seemed to have discerned the physical and mental state of President Biden long before the governing class in the D.C. to Boston corridor were able to see it. Clearly our Central Intelligence Agency has not always been as intelligent as we might have hoped. A good bit of Cold War foreign policy was premised on the belief that the Russian Bear was much more powerful than he really was. History teaches us that it is foolhardy to invade Russia but it also teaches us that her Cold-War economy was a wreck and that her military looked better on the parade ground than it did in the field.
What God Says
Conspiracies do occur. This Spring, I attended the trial of two Antifa conspirators who were convicted. Nine others were also convicted of conspiracy to commit various crimes in January, 2021. Just as there have been conspiracies in secular history there have been conspiracies in the history of salvation (e.g., Judges 9; 1 Sam 15; 1 Kings 16; Matt 28:11–15). It is Gnostic, however, to attribute everything to conspiracies and it is naive to deny that conspiracies ever happen, but Scripture teaches us that there is a truth above all human conspiracies: God is sovereign over all things. Nothing happens outside of his general providence.
In order to begin to grasp this wonderful truth we must start at the beginning: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). There was when God was and there was nothing else. Then, through his Word, God made all that is. The Apostle John explained, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). God spoke creation into existence. Therefore it obeys his sovereign will. The Psalmist says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps 115:3). He “upholds the universe by the word of power” (Heb 1:3). The Psalmist says “Yahweh has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Ps 103:19).
What We Confess
This is why, in the Apostles’ Creed, Christians confess: “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” This is how the Reformed churches explain this clause in Heidelberg Catechism 26:
What do you believe when you say: “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”?
That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of nothing made heaven and earth with all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the same by His eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ, His Son, my God and my Father, in whom I so trust, as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil He sends upon me in this vale of tears, He will turn to my good; for He is able to do it, being almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father.
God upholds and governs all things. Nothing escapes his sovereign control. Proverbs 21:1 says, the “king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” We trust him because he is all powerful. We trust him because is good.
In Heidelberg 27 we further say,
What do you understand by the providence of God?
The almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His Fatherly hand.
Knowing that the same God who made us, who saved us, is the God who governs our daily life changes the way we look at things. It gives us Christians perspective. Whatever people may plot and plan, they can only do what God has sovereignly decreed will happen. Joseph was correct. They mean it for evil, but God means it for good (Gen 50:20). There are no accidents. There are no little things, no secrets, that escape his control. If there are conspirators in the world, they are getting away with nothing and they are doing nothing that God, from all eternity, has not decreed shall be done. He really does have the whole world in his hands.
This is not to counsel carelessness but it is to counsel faith—that is, confidence in our gracious, good, and merciful Father. We are not pagans. We do not fear malevolent minor deities who are out to get us. Nothing can separate us from our Savior, no one can snatch us from his powerful hands (John 10:28).
We do not yet know how the story of the attempted assassination will come out, but we do know who is sovereign over all things and he is worthy of our complete confidence.
endnotes
1. The expression “third-rate burglary” is credited to Ronald Ziegler.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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My guess is that God has been giving rebellious and indifferent church worse and worse national leaderships.
But, concerning our US government and its overestimation of Soviet Power, please keep in mind that the job of the CIA is to assess threats to the USA. They are also paid to think in worst case scenarios and must figure out what people who don’t want us to know things are thinking and doing.
Thanks so much for needed perspective. I always cringe when people say “they” tried to do such and such. Whether it’s a he or a they involved, God is intimately involved. This should be a stop and reflect moment for all.
Thank you for this article. It really helps explain the fascination with conspiracy theories and it redirects us back to Christ. I enjoyed it and plan to share it with others.
Amen. A good reminder of who we are and where our hope comes from.
It is tempting to live in suspicion of all going on around us. Proofs, such as WikiLeaks publishes, confirm there are untold nefarious government secrets, yet our call from Colossians 3 is to, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
And we cry out, Come Lord Jesus. Creation is groaning…..