What if God Really Is In Control?
by Dennis Peacocke
On the way to the airport on a recent business trip, I overheard two obviously well-educated and intelligent people alluding to President Bush's recent State of the Union message. As I listened to their polysyllabic words and "penetrating" sarcastic insights, I mused to myself about the countless conversations I have heard, and books or articles I have read, by "smart" people criticizing "those dumb political leaders." History has proven that smart people can make a great deal of money criticizing their leaders by either talking wittily, writing wittily, or lecturing as a professor with the appropriate cutting comments. History also has proven that some "dumb politicians," in retrospect, seem to have gotten considerably smarter as time has passed. Historical perspective has softened their "stupidity" and made their words and actions almost wise and appropriate for the context in which they made their decisions.
What if the "dummies" we get are the dummies we deserve (and should have)? What if God actually uses the foolish of the world not only to confound the wise, but also to direct circumstances and people in the general direction He wants them to go? I am not intending to blame God for some leaders' vain, foolish, or evil decisions. Neither am I attempting to create a tautological universe where what is, is "right" by definition. Nor am I a Zen-master pointing out the "suchness" of things. What I am saying is that God can and does trump human evil and stupidity all the time. He seems to make a living doing it.
A classic case in point is former President Harry S. Truman. In the years during and after his post-F.D.R. presidency, he was commonly looked upon as a somewhat mediocre dunce from the Midwest who, in modern parlance, became a success by simply "showing up" at the right time in the right place. Republicans and Democrats alike often viewed him as a kind of mild embarrassment. Academically under-educated, although actually very well-read, Truman was "misplaced" at the helm. His task was overseeing the closing of World War II and beginning the job of rebuilding a devastated Europe and Japan, while at the same time confronting the beginning of a nasty Cold War chess game. Indeed, in retrospect, it was a huge task and an historical pivot into the 21st century. Poor Harry--under-qualified and over his head. Yet history has been increasingly kind to the salesman from Missouri. He is but one example of scores we could look at and see "dummies" who later made good.
Like many of us, I am often left mumbling to myself at the level of public discussion and debate, let alone the attempt to define and frame the issues. "What planet are some of these people from?" I stand second to none, I daresay, on wanting to see our nation deal with the real issues, which so often are missing or ill-defined. Nevertheless, God seems to plod along, working with us all to keep the thing headed on a trajectory that uses "dummies," in spite of ourselves, to make it all work out.
I contend that the history of the 20th century was largely written by a few "very smart" people who used their visions of enlightened social engineering to harm us all considerably. "Dummies" are usually too unaware to cast platonic "philosopher-king" visions of a re-engineered humanity, the likes of which Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler offered to us. The more I think about it, the more I heartily raise my glass to the "dummies" of history, and the God who works through them, and that is...
the bottom line.
