When politicians talk about divine intervention, God help us. Only a Being of infinite forbearance could endure the implications of negligence lodged against Him.

This month, as Texas parents were still looking for the bodies of their children, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said, “I’m extremely grateful for God’s hand in that whole situation because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were saved.”

That blinkered accounting is shocking but not unusual. We’ve heard repeatedly that God nudged an assassin’s bullet away from Donald Trump’s head in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Why He didn’t offer that same protection to firefighter Corey Comperatore is left unmentioned.

Don’t press too hard on the sloppy logic of public praise for His preferential protection. God, we’re left to assume, is either a capricious gangster or a distracted lifeguard.

Miracles are a tough challenge for modern theology — the happy twin to the problem of evil. As the subject of political bromides, angel-touched TV shows and life-after-death bestsellers, divine intervention hovers outside the world of rational thought and scientific investigation. Miracles are even less likely to break through into the realm of literary fiction.

That’s what makes Jon Raymond’s new novel, “God and Sex,” so fascinating — and so unsettling. Without a hint of religious posturing or angelic wing-flapping, Raymond asks, “Could you really stand to have your prayers answered?”

The story takes place in laid-back Ashland, Oregon. Raymond — the author of several novels, including “The Half-Life,” and the screenwriter for HBO’s “Mildred Pierce” — is in no hurry to get it going. The narrator, Arthur, describes himself as “a minor writer of spiritual texts.” His books are those quasi-academic, Emersonian titles that thoughtful people exchange on holidays. Arthur drills down on single subjects — such as “light” — and offers up neatly packaged discoveries, profiles and reflections ranging from scientific to mythopoetic.

For his next book, Arthur has decided, somewhat cynically, to write about forests. “Trees were becoming more popular in the marketplace of ideas,” he notes, nodding to Richard Powers, Suzanne Simard and Robin Wall Kimmerer. “You could feel the tide of the book industry turning, exiting the long era of quantum spirituality books — all the tomes describing the wacky quarks and superstrings underlying the surface of everyday life — and moving into a more earthy discourse of trees and plants.” He’ll sow in that fertile field, too, he thinks, and get a book done over the next year.

Much of the early section of “God and Sex” lacks enough of either. It focuses instead on the tedious process of writing, which contributes to the impression that Arthur is more precious about his craft than his modest success warrants. “I was collecting stray buttons and threads,” he explains, “weaving them into my growing structure. I was making room. I was becoming absorbed.” I was not.

But I’m so glad I hung on. It eventually becomes clear that this deliberate introduction to Arthur and his well-ordered process has all been set down for the express purpose of shattering that carefully constructed world.

Among the people Arthur contacts as potential sources is Phil French, a forest ecologist who teaches biology courses cross-listed with the English department. Phil — friendly, saintly Phil — proves to be a fortuitous ally. He knows and appreciates Arthur’s books, he’s eager to share his scientific and philosophical wisdom, and he has a sardonic and beautiful wife named Sarah.

In the weeks and months that follow, Arthur becomes fast friends with Phil and his wife. “Sarah and I were modern, sophisticated people,” Arthur insists, “beyond any regressive rom-com clichés. We were capable of many kinds of mellow fellowship.” But the kind of mellow fellowship they eventually settle on is the kind that involves sneaking around and having sex like a regressive rom-com cliché.

Raymond is far too honest a writer to make any of this funny or cute. There’s a cringy twang to Arthur and Sarah’s trysts, and hearing the “minor writer of spiritual texts” try to justify betraying his friend sends the novel gliding along a Möbius strip of faulty moral reasoning.

And it’s at this point that “God and Sex” suddenly accelerates. In the midst of a terrifying crisis — which demonstrates what fiery action Raymond can create when he wants to — Arthur asks God for a miracle.

And God grants it.

I can’t emphasize enough how odd this is. I would be less surprised to hear a burning bush talk than to find a miracle interrupting a literary novel. And what makes it particularly wondrous is how steady Raymond holds his hand. Nothing about “God and Sex” grows gauzy or mystical. But Arthur, with his makeshift theology cobbled together from bits of Christianity, pseudoscience and New Age platitudes, must suddenly deal with the repercussions of what he believes he was granted.

And, of course, what he believes he was granted is as slippery as a fish — subjected to an infinite cycle of reconsideration, mocking doubt and terrified reaffirmation. Was it an honest-to-God act of God, a fairy tale or just a moment of oxygen deprivation?

In Raymond’s thoughtful handling, this makes for a fascinating, rare examination of a rational mind confronting the limits of rationality. He captures Arthur in the crosscurrents of doubt and belief, snagged on moments of lucidity and wit. How elastic is our faith, the novel wonders, how interwoven is it with vanity and superstition? Tangled in the dilemma of getting what he prayed for, Arthur must now take seriously the implacable bargain he made with God, along with the terror of living with the possibility of such fickle interventions in a world ablaze with suffering.

Could the immutable law of the universe really be set aside by the right prayers, sufficiently humble begging, desperate wheedling?

“The only immutable law of the universe,” Arthur thinks, “was irony.”

That’s just one of many provocations this exceptional novel delivers — an unexpected answer to readers’ prayers for fiction that dares to approach the treacherous border of faith.