No one claimed to speak for God

I’ve known Larry Baumbach for many years. I know him to be an intelligent, reasonable man. I’ve enjoyed many conversations with him and I think the ones in which we disagreed I’ve enjoyed most. Never in all the years I’ve know Larry has he shown the unmitigated hubris of claiming to know the mind of God. He asks good questions but doesn’t claim to speak for God.

Apparently not the case with Ms. Ruhl-LaMusga.

When you look up in the night sky, the observable boundary of what you see is 46 X 10 to the tenth power light years away. Given that there are 5,878,652,370,000 miles in a light year it would be silly to type the entire number here. It goes just as far on the other side if the Earth. We call it ‘space’ and it is filled with objects, galaxies, planets, and, other things too numerous to list. If, like me, Ms. Ruhl-LaMusga believes God created it all, I wonder how an inhabitant of a tiny little dot of a planet lost in an immense ocean of galaxies can know God is a Republican and Donald Trump is his emissary.

Some years ago there was another charismatic figure who rose to popularity by saying the dark things that many wanted to hear, perhaps you know of him, the Dominican friar Tomás de Torquemada. He successfully vilified everyone who did not believe exactly as he thought they should. I’m just saying.

— John Spangler, Chico