DNJ Column 2/24/19 I saw a Facebook post today that strongly suggested that our current president is “God’s man” for this hour. Now some of you are hyperventilating and some of you are cheering. This would be a perfect example of the inappropriate mixing of religion and politics if done by a government official using government time or money. But it was a private citizen expressing his opinion. You and I have also seen opinions opposite from that on social media, some quite extreme in the other direction. But is there any sense to the notion that a government leader can be God’s man (or woman; see the Bible, Judges 4) for this particular hour? The idea itself does indeed derive from the Bible. See cases like Joseph, great-grandson of Abraham, through whom it is said God preserved many lives during the famine in Egypt perhaps 4,000 years ago. This and other passages are foundations of the idea of the “providence of God,” i.e., that God operates behind the scenes of history, as it were, to bring about his purposes. In the story of Joseph, that purpose was specifically to keep alive the descendants of Jacob, the twelve tribes, God’s chosen people, during the region wide famine. You may be familiar with Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and seven lean cows which ate up the fat cows, presaging the famine throughout the region. By virtue of interpreting Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph (“coat of many colors”: that Joseph) is promoted to #2 in Egypt and institutes government control of grain stocks to lay in enough surplus to survive the approaching famine. Many Bible readers are sometimes surprised that every character in the Bible is not a moral exemplar. Joseph’s wisdom preserves countless lives during the famine, but using Pharaoh’s delegated power, he also, having confiscated a portion of every Egyptian’s harvest during the “fat years,” turned around and sold it back to the Egyptians during the lean years. First, it was sold for money. When people ran out of money, they exchanged their livestock for grain, and when that was gone, they gave up their farmland to Pharaoh for grain, and when that was used up, Joseph essentially turned the Egyptians into slaves in exchange for grain by allowing them to sell themselves to Pharaoh. To me that seems deeply problematic for a political leader from our modern perspective of liberal democracy. But the Bible tells that story without saying “this is how good leaders act.” That episode is part of the overall Joseph story in the second half of Genesis in which, in the realm of human freedom, God nonetheless, for the purpose of advancing his intention to preserve a people to be a light to the world, sometimes pushes an actor forward onto the stage of history. There are other examples. You can look them up. Jephthah, Gideon, Ehud, Samson, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great. Cyrus is even called, by Isaiah the prophet, God’s “messiah,” meaning he was anointed (chosen by God) for a particular task. Esther (in the biblical book of Esther) is reminded by her older cousin Mordecai, and this is where the phrase is first used, that perhaps she has her place of prominence in Xerxes’ court “for just such a time as this,” that the Jews might be spared Haman’s planned genocide. So perhaps she was “God’s woman for that hour.” I can’t explain all of history and justify every good or bad player on the world stage. But I know how the story ends. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Steve Odom is pastor of Central Christian Church on E. Main St. and may be reached at steven.odom@gmail.com