I'm Sorry, But I Really Have To Address This...

I know 90% of the blog world is going to react to this, and I hate that I'm not being original. But whenever Pat Robertson says something like this I think it's sort of my duty as one of his siblings in Christ to say "Whoa, buddy!"

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

According to Robertson, he heard from the Lord at a prayer retreat that the 4th Quarter outlook for a few U.S. citizens would be a little bit less than rosy. Since I personally was not at this "prayer retreat" I cannot vouch for the presence of the actual Lord in Robertson's conversation.

I will say that the record I have of the Word of the Lord says things like "fear not, for I am with thee" and "for God has not given us the spirir of fear, but of power and love and wisdom." Granted, it is impossible for Man to fully know the mind of God. I do think, however, that the parts of His mind He has chosen to reveal to us speak of a just God, a loving God, and a God who would sacrifice Himself to save us. In that context I really don't understand Robertson's purported snuff-film conversations with the Holy Spirit.

We are all going to die someday. It is the inevitable truth of being alive, to know that life will assuredly end. Some of us will die in our beds, others of us will meet our ends in hospitals or cars or at the business end of a knife wielded by a psychotic clown. When some Christians predict mass-destruction it's a sort of prognostic Schadenfreude that allows them to feel superior. It bugs me because that attitude is the life-and-death version of the Parable of The Unworthy Debtor--or whatever it's called.

Jesus tells this story about a guy who owes a whole bunch of money to a powerful king-type. He begs the powerful king-type for mercy, and the king forgives the guy's debt. Once he's had his debt forgiven, the guy tracks down a beggar who owes him like the equivalent of five bucks. The guy then basically beats the five bucks out of the beggar. To my mind Pat Robertson's Doom 2007 is just like that. Pat's smug because he's been forgiven for his sins. He then goes to what he views as Godless Wicked America and threatens GWA with his "vision" of mass destruction. Robertson wants to see people punished for their debts.

Yes, I too would like it if America would clean up its act a little bit. We could stop trafficking in sex slaves. We could make sure that the poor have enough to eat, a place to sleep. We could be responsible with our money and our lives. But I'm not rooting for whole chunks of our countrymen to be blown away. I'm sad that Robertson's message seems to take pleasure in that bleak vision.