The Ottawa Citizen wednesday, January 11, 2006, By Dan Gardner. ©The Ottawa Citizen.
It can't be easy being Pat Robertson. Like lots of fervent Christians, the American evangelist believes that God wants the Jews to have all of what was ancient Israel and he followed that belief to the corollary that any Israeli politician who gives away land acts contrary to the wishes of Jehovah. And from there, it was obvious that Ariel Sharon's stroke was caused by a vengeful Lord hurling thunderbolts, or blowing a heavenly trumpet or doing whatever it is the Lord does to cause strokes.
And yet simply for following his faith through to its logical conclusion -- and for doing it in front of his 700 Club television audience -- Mr. Robertson was denounced and ridiculed by newspaper columnists, politicians and the White House. Even some of his fellow evangelists said the old fellow is getting a tad embarrassing.
Imagine.
In all fairness, there are lots of other devout servants of the Lord who agree with Mr. Robertson. "The Torah says that whoever touches the land of Israel gets his punishment," an evicted Israeli settler told reporter Rory Mulholland. "Everything is from God." Some settlers went further and claimed that a curse -- "pulsa denura," or lashes of fire -- they put on Mr. Sharon last July had finally kicked in. "Nothing could kill Sharon," another man told Mr. Mulholland, "but we got him with the pulsa denura." (As a trained lawyer, I must digress to note this raises a host of fascinating legal questions. If God was acting on the settlers' orders, have the settlers committed a crime? Can you put a pulsa denura in a Ziploc bag and label it Exhibit A? Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a pulsa denura?)
Many Muslims also saw God's vengeance behind Mr. Sharon's stroke. "Pat Robertson said this is a gift from Allah. On this, we agree," said a Muslim community leader in that hotbed of Islamic extremism, Greensboro, North Carolina. Allah wasn't angered at Mr. Sharon for getting out of Gaza, naturally. It was Mr. Sharon's involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 that did it, although it's strange that He waited 23 years to wreak His awesome vengeance. Perhaps He felt revenge is a dish best served very, very cold.
What I find odd about all this hand-of-God talk is not the rather cold spectacle of human beings relishing the misfortune of a fellow man as a manifestation of holy justice. At least there's an internal logic there. Once you've accepted the idea that there is not only a God but that the Lord intervenes to decide who wins wars, who gets the plague, who has a baby and whether the Broncos will cover the point spread, it follows pretty logically that God decides whether the prime minister of Israel will have a stroke.
What makes no sense is to say that there is a God, that He is directly involved in the affairs of humanity, that He must be thanked for good fortune -- but that it is outrageous and unconscionable to ascribe the misfortune of a high-ranking man to divine will. Those who believe that the Bible is something more than the collected writings of desert-dwelling primitives with too much time on their hands need only look at the Book of Job, wherein Job suffers a lot more than a stroke simply because God had a bet with the Devil. If the Lord would afflict you with boils and kill your children just so He could say "booyah!" to Lucifer, what would He do if you really pissed him off? And yet, as logically unsupportable as it is, this second view of an interventionist deity is remarkably popular. It saturates daytime television and soft-rock radio. It infests the non-fiction best-seller lists. It routinely appears on the news in the form of the crash survivor who thanks God for saving him instead of the other 192 people who were left to be crushed, burned and suffocated.
During the last presidential election, George W. Bush's campaign rallies routinely featured mass prayers in which the faithful proclaimed their belief that the Lord had personally intervened to put Mr. Bush in the White House -- apparently it was God who came up with the Florida butterfly ballot.
A recent television news story on the anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami ended with a young Indonesian man musing that the disaster was God's way of telling people to be more devout. Now, one might ask why it is that the omniscient and omnipotent Master of the Universe couldn't figure out a way to communicate that doesn't involve drowning babies and leaving children naked, starving and orphaned. But the reporter didn't ask that rather obvious question. Instead, this metaphysical insight was aired unchallenged, with images of a mosque and slow-rolling surf giving it an air of dignity and reverence.
This is the sort of respectful tone one is supposed to adopt when discussing faith. It is rude to think critically about the content of religious claims. It is impolite to be judgmental. One must not say that views such as this Indonesian man's, or those of Mr. Bush's more passionate supporters, make no sense even on their own irrational terms. One must not say they are crude, absurd, wretchedly superstitious and unworthy of the human brain.
Unless, of course, it's crazy old Pat Robertson we're talking about.
Then this whole divine intervention thing is just nutty.
"Drawing the line on divine intervention"
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Louis IV the Fat
would you mind if I put that in my signature?
Bookmarks