The nearly tragic shooting of a former president last week has made one thing clear: We tend to find God where we want to see Him. 

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Mike Masterson did just that when he wrote Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s life was spared by a “GodNod.” 

“You’ll never convince me the apparent bullet intended for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania the other day wasn’t deterred by a mere half-inch by a GodNod,” Masterson wrote. 

As everyone surely knows by now, someone shot at Trump while he was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania. One of the bullets grazed Trump’s ear, leaving his face bloodied as Secret Service agents whisked him away from the scene. Trump’s raised fist and defiant chants of “Fight, fight” will likely be ingrained in his legacy. 

What followed the perilous events was murkiness about the details (How could this happen? Where was the security?) and a lot of people trying to make sense of it all. 

It’s true that, in the split second before the bullet whizzed by, Trump had turned his head slightly to look at a slide on a screen. If he hadn’t turned his head, Trump would possibly be dead and the nation would have been cast further into division and chaos. 

The most interesting part of this God-as-hero argument is what’s left out. A man named Corey Comperatore was killed during the shooting at the Trump rally, reportedly while protecting his family. I wonder why we find God present in Trump’s dodging of death but fail to recognize God’s absence in Comperatore’s death. And, if God has the power to intervene and protect Trump from the bullet headed his way, why did God allow a gunman to wind up on a roof with a rifle in the first place? 

And why would Trump be worthy of divine intervention, but not someone else? You can miss me with the argument about the righteousness of the married man recently convicted for paying off a porn star. 

The GodNod logic is flawed. It requires a powerful God cast as the dramatic protector on one hand and an absent deity allowing a world of suffering on the other. 

Look at it this way: When Michael Scott, the regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton on the TV show “The Office,” was in trouble with his boss for a good idea that turned bad, he said “I do want the credit without any of the blame.” 

That’s what the GodNod argument sounds like to me. 

“It wasn’t his time to leave this world,” Masterson wrote of Trump. It’s too bad others don’t get the same consideration.