Chosen For What?

In July 2015 Governor Rick Perry

said Trumpism was no more than "a barking carnival act" and "a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense".

"I will not go quiet when this cancer on conservatism threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics that will send the Republican Party to the same place it sent the Whig Party in 1854: the graveyard," said Perry.

My, how times have changed. Now

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry says President Donald Trump is God’s “chosen one” to lead the nation, comparing the president to several Old Testament kings.

“God used imperfect people all through history,” Perry, a former Texas governor, said in an interview with Fox News over the weekend. “King David wasn’t perfect, Saul wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect.”

Perry told Fox News that he gave the president a one-page memo of “imperfect” Old Testament kings who were sent by God to do great things. He framed his thinking as part of his evangelical beliefs — noting that he also thought former President Barack Obama was chosen by God.

Previously a cancerous, barking carnival act, Trump since has been chosen by God to lead the USA, which is a rather harsh commentary on God and His plans for this nation. It is, though, possible that Perry was right previously (as he obviously was) and is right now.  Theologian John Piper wrote in 2014

.... the Bible portrays God’s relation to nations as tolerating sin up to a point, and then bringing calamity. God said to Abram that his descendants would spend four hundred years in a foreign land as slaves (Genesis 15:13). Then God would “bring judgment on the nation that they serve” (Genesis 15:14).

Therefore, God may in fact have chosen Donald Trump, chosen him to punish the nation for its sin and iniquity, however He might see it. This might even be consistent with Perry's suggestion- which was short of an explicit claim- that Trump was sent to do great things.  The great things might be for Turkey, Syria, or Russia- just not for the USA.

Or perhaps Perry is simply blowing smoke up his boss' posterior because he once argued that the previous President chosen by God 

hasn’t shown any “engagement to stop ISIS,” which he attributed to the president’s “lack of being able to really connect the dots” and “lack of executive experience.” […]

“I think that’s the reason ISIS has gone forward, I think that’s the reason Putin is standing there basically laughing at us as we have one lack of impact after another in the global world that we’re living in,” he said.

Maybe Donald Russia and Barack H. Obama were chosen by God, in which case Rick Perry has no more regard for God's judgement as he has for Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

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