Long time readers know that I occasionally rip emails from the conservative data stream into little pieces for entertainment purposes. This time it’s a little bit different (although I will point out one outright lie) – I’ll just riposte. Here’s the email (in all its glorious lack of useful formatting):
Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this happen?” (regarding the attacks on Sept, 11, hurricanes and earth quakes. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?” In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school …. the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK. Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing? Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think, of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us. Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.
God bless you as you share it with friends. No Nation or people can ever survive or succeed without Jesus Christ.
Let’s get the lie (or simple mistake) out of the way first – Dr. Spock’s children are still alive. However, a grandson did commit suicide. He suffered from schizophrenia. I do not know if that statement was part of the original interview (which did actually happen, according to Snopes).
But the important part is to address the real point of this interview with Anne Graham Lotz, which is to suggest that by the banishment of God from public life, we’re not suffering disasters.
First of all, Lotz is depending on (or perhaps mislead herself) by the chronological distance from her Golden Age. The fact of the matter is that nations which have God, whichever one they may favor, have been rife with public disasters, whether they be natural or manmade. I’ve written about this before here, wherein the public embrace of Christianity by English monarchs (and one Lord Protector) have been intimately accompanied by various crimes against humanity.
Let’s face it – religion may call us to the highest forms of behavior, but it often serves as a self-centered excuse for the lowest forms of behavior.
And if my reader wishes to reject these incidents because they take place in a monarchy, let me point out that, prior to the move towards a more secular society in the United States, the Bath School massacre of 1927 resulted in the murders of 38 children and 6 adults. Earthquakes, serial killers, horrible fires, hurricanes – all of these happen regardless of God.
Now let’s address matters of scale. The further you go back in history, the fewer people there are co-existing. That is, the population of the Earth drops. We know this intellectually, but it’s hard to absorb into your bones.. But once you do, it should become apparent that, coupled with the exponential jumps in our news reporting systems (we no longer have to send clipper ships around the southern tip of South America to gets from New York to San Francisco, just as an example), now it seems like there are more terrorist incidents and more murders and, oh, earthquakes and any other tragic event you care to name.
Well, those that are manmade, sure. There’s more people.
And there’s more crowding. Overpopulate a niche with rats and they start eating each other, which is illustrative of how the battle for living space can transform peaceful folks into genocides. Just think of how much the Serbs and Croats had a go at each other when Yugoslavia fell apart.
All that said, if Christianity were structured such that it could ensure a lack of violence, then it might be worth it to enmesh ourselves in a myth. But it isn’t. It’s infinitely malleable. It’s been used to justify wars of aggression, slavery, murder, as well as donating money and food for the poverty-stricken.
The United States is a secular nation for very good reasons. It’s one of the reasons we’re as prosperous as we are. Why should we emphasize a force that divides us in the public sphere?
In the end, Lotz’ call for religion is a call to huddle under the cloak of a mythical creator.
A secular society, on the other hand, is a call to be adults.
Which should we be?
