This column is part of our ongoing opinion commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith. Find this week’s reader question and get weekly roundups of project in your email in-box by signing up for the Living Our Faith newsletter.

In the wake of the 2016 election and now amid an impending Senate impeachment trial, many evangelical Christians, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, say that President Donald Trump was chosen by God.

The claim creates confusion for the public. Do all Christians believe this? Is it somehow part of the faith? Do people of other faiths believe God influences the outcome of elections? Yet, the more you dig into it, you find that this claim about Trump has less to do with theology and conviction and more with politics and power.

At the end of Romans 13:1, the Apostle Paul writes, “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” The Old Testament offers numerous passages that say God chooses the leaders of nations.

The Bible is full of statements and stories that leave room for varying interpretation. But regardless of the theological position or movement, many Christians agree that God is behind selecting our rulers and kings.

While they get this part correct, many evangelical leaders go wrong when they then conclude two things: The leader is morally good and right, and Christians must support the leader. If God chooses governmental rulers and leaders, then that’s true for all governmental rulers and leaders throughout history — the good and the bad. The Old Testament talks repeatedly, in fact, about God raising up opposing powers and leaders against Israel.

So, yes, I believe God chose Trump to be president, but he also chose Barack Obama and all the presidents before him. If God chose King David, then he also chose the Assyrian leaders and army that later took his people into exile.

God elects all rulers, but not always because they are good or will do good, sometimes just the opposite. Many Christians believe that, in some mysterious way, God is orchestrating all things toward the promise of redemption and restoration, sometimes using what was meant for evil to carry out what is good.

If we believe this point, we can also believe that just because God chooses a given leader doesn’t mean that Christians must champion or support that leader, especially in the context of a republic. We are called to obey the laws of the land, so long as they don’t oppose our beliefs, and to pray for our leaders. But hitching our wagon to a party or politician is a completely different thing, and not necessarily something Christians are called to do.

The reality, though, is that many of the evangelical leaders making these claims about President Trump don’t actually believe them. If they did, they would have said the same thing about Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and so on.

Given the inconsistency, it seems clear that these leaders know full well how to interpret this part of Scripture rationally, and they did for a long time, yet they are now exploiting it to gain political power. They claim the support — and the future vote — of the president is an issue of sin, as if Christian faithfulness and obedience depended on it. Sadly, this is an attempt to control and manipulate believers to support Trump.

This might seem like an overstatement, but in a recent exchange, Christian author and radio host Eric Metaxas and Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, said opposition to Trump comes from “almost a demonic power,” and the country is engaged in spiritual warfare.

So is Trump chosen by God? Yes and no. But is that really the point anyway? The point is that many evangelicals continue to operate not out of faith, but out of fear, in the midst of our divided cultural climate. They’re willing to twist the Bible if it means victory for their candidate.

Yet if we are willing to stand firm in our faith, with hope and courage, we don’t have to confuse Scripture — or the watching world, for that matter.

David Roark is a faith and culture writer in North Texas who works in marketing and communications. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.