Divinity and elections

In response to C.L. Carter of Roselle (Your Views, November 29), I would submit that a loving God would never have placed Donald Trump in the Oval Office, no more than he found Abraham Lincoln on the frontier and groomed him to save the Union in the 1860s. Yes, God is in charge, but he's in charge of giving us humans brains so that we can use them for the greater good, or make terrible mistakes, as in the 2016 presidential election.

And just as true, Americans used those God-given brains to choose Joe Biden as president this time around to course-correct our nation's journey, which was driven off its straight-and-narrow route because of the ungodly actions of Trump and his fanatics. God didn't give us our leaders any more than he gave Mussolini to Italy in the 1920s or Hitler to Germany in the 1930s. We humans made those terrible mistakes, and we humans have to pay dearly for them to restore righteousness in God's name.

God may have created us, but he doesn't move us around like little plastic figurines to amuse himself. He gave us the reasoning, the emotions and the spirit to plan our own lives and to err and to learn from our errors. We made the decision to overwhelmingly elect Joe Biden and to correct the 77,000 people in three states who voted for and elected Trump to denigrate our democracy and belittle our citizens of color.

We may pray to God for help in making decisions, but the choice is ours. We had the courage to change the things we could, and because of our wisdom now, we know to not accept the things we cannot change until we know we can.

Paul Pearce

Lake Barrington