Is God Mad at the Republican Party?

I actually have a direct line to God and let me tell you, he's laughing his ass off at the Republicans. Jesus is cracking up, too. The Holy Ghost has been away on holiday, but when he returns I'll let you know what his take on things is.

Meanwhile, if you have any questions for God, I'll be happy to pass them along to the big guy.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. God wants everyone on earth to send me money. Lots of money. And a new car would be cool too.

This article is actually pretty damned good, especially for emphasizing some of the core principles of Christianity -- love your enemies, look after widows and orphans in their distress, keep yourself from being polluted by the world ... I would add one principle that the writer implied but did not state outright, namely, "Easier for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." And a correction: America is no longer about the pursuit of happiness. Sorry, folks. That was superseded quite some time ago by the pursuit of money, the pursuit of stuff, the pursuit of tons and tons of great stuff. Do you want to know why countless Islamic fanatics will die rather than submit to the American juggernaut? It's because in their eyes, that juggernaut is a giant corporate-controlled Walmart coming at them with slogans of "family values" and "freedom" and "free market values." If one could just capture the true image of that from an outsider's perspective, one might for a moment step out of American rhetoric and see the monster for what it really is. And if there is anyone at all out there who thinks that the "religious right" is not thanking God for their money every night, on their humble lachrymose bended knees, think again. And think deeper. The Pharisees in Jesus' time were also full of their own righteous selves, but Christ told them they were all going to hell. Why does anyone think that the religious right has anything to do with morality, or that Bush and fellow conservatives have anything to do with Christianity? So I agree with the writer and emphasize again and again: get the association out of your mind. The ones who trumpet their own "family values" and "Christian principles" the loudest are without exception the ones who are going most directly and speedily to hell.

There is another confirmation/correction I want to make, because even though the writer of this article hit home on most major points, he stated and implied, by saying that God brought retribution on Bush/Republican party, that God was previously on Bush's side and put him in office in the first place by a sovereign holy mandate. If you don't mind my saying so, we don't know what God does or does not do. Only fools and hypocrites, like Ted Haggard, will stand up before millions and state with certainty what they think God does or does not do. Some of us know what the Bible says God will do, but that is no final assurance either. It's just as plausible, and perhaps even more of a hopeful idea, that a slight majority of Americans who voted are not at all complete fools, and actually rose to the occasion to speak out in an extraordinary voice to clean house, to get rid of the scum in government. It brought me a kernel of hope, anyway, to see a moment of clarity in the electorate. Doesn't matter how multivarious that clarity was, it was still clarity.

And by the way, maybe the facts are hard to nail down, but from a number of reliable sources it appears that it's actually the Catholics that voted Democrat and made the difference, not "evangelical Christians." So as much as you diehard literalists might hate Catholics' Mariolatry or infant baptism or excessive ceremonialism, you might ask yourselves why "God spoke the truth to Catholics and turned them out to vote Democrat," but He didn't speak the truth to evangelical Christians -- who will forever think that because abortion seems abominable to them, they should vote Republican -- in other words, who don't think about anything clearly at all. And God was apparently content to leave them in their perpetual state of stupidity and proffer His light and revelation to those damned non-Biblical Catholics. What could He be thinking?

Excellent comment

Those who use the bible as a tool for power often forget the real message. Remember Jesus said not to pray for the eyes of others.

Dr. Paul,

Correction noted. I welcomed the main highlights of your article for reasons already discussed. But I have always been very skeptical of the associations between Christianity and the Republican party. Your main point, right in the title of your piece, is fully in line with Scripture, which teaches us that it is God, ultimately, who puts this or that person in office, and can as easily remove them if "he's mad." Thus we have commands such as "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," etc. A "good Christian" is called upon to be obedient to the hierarchies of order placed over him by his sovereign God -- so the Bible says, if one is to take it literally.

But this is precisely where I take issue. It is not easy, at least not for me, to question the authority of Scripture, but it is even more difficult to stomach the hypocrisy and evil I see wearing the cloaks of "family values" and the "good solid midwest American heartland Republican Christian morals" etc. etc. I have been very close to a number of Republicans in my lifetime and I have known some of them very, very well: they are worlds apart from the goodie-goodie ministers of Christ that they pretend to be. This administration of George Bush has been the quintessence of everything I always knew and feared about Republicans. They believe not in small government, but in big government. They are reckless and endless spenders of our national resources. They are completely indifferent to the limitations of the resources of the earth, instead of being the proper stewards they should be. They wage endless war in order to eliminate, ultimately, any possible alternative to the mega-Walmart they want to force into every country and culture on the face of the earth. All their votes reward oil and gas and the large corporations which mine the earth for all its resources as swiftly as possible; there is no respect for the environment, none whatsoever among these people. Nor do they respect the Constitution of this country or the individual rights and freedoms they bellow about most vociferously. Others have written about this better than I. Most cynically of all, they pretend loudly and longly to be believing Christians for one awful, horrendous reason and only one reason: to get the votes of sincere Christians, who think they have good values and turn out in droves like the stupid undiscerning sheep they are, and keep re-electing the bastards over and over and over.

God is mad at "my Republican friends," you wrote. Yes, perhaps you're right. I think you're right about almost everything. But I have to ask you -- not to answer me here, but only within your private counsels, in your closet, so to speak, away from all eyes and ears. I have to ask you, if you have absorbed so much wisdom, as you clearly have, from your faith, or your knowledge of Scripture, how can you possibly refer to these corporate capitalist earth- and culture-destroying fascists as your "friends"? There comes a time when, if you have really absorbed the teaching of Scripture, you have to throw the book aside and remember only the Christ who drove the money-changers out of the temple with a whip. The revolutionary Christ, the Christ who was crucified precisely because he spoke out against the powers that be. This government is not Christian, and insofar as it has trampled our civil rights and many of the principles of the Constitution, is not even properly American. The rest of the world knew it for a long time and the American electorate finally showed its understanding of this too, on Nov. 6. What I'd encourage you to do, since you have a following, is try to get Christians' minds off their pet private issues (gay-bashing, abortion) and teach them to focus on the big issues that will transform the earth in the next couple of decades -- the transformations that our children will inherit and have to pay for.

You speak of the delayed Second Coming? If only you could take half the energy you pour into that great hope and channel it instead into confrontations with your "Republican friends." If you could show one of them, just one of them, the truth about one big transforming issue: global warming, for example -- the moral necessity of being responsible stewards of the earth's natural resources; or, more personally, show one person, just one, something of his own hypocrisy. Two specific examples? We read now that the ocean will be out of fish by 2050; and Ted Haggard, one might assume, voted Republican every time he ever voted. You, Dr. Paul, who clearly have a serious mind, have the big responsibility: because as you say, and I am sure with a degree of pain, "these are my friends." I applaud you for your serious analysis of the possibly divine retribution that came on November 6. Now I wonder if you can be a real force for change, and not just one of their easily tolerated token believers they like to place behind themselves left and right on important photo shoots, among your "Republican friends."

I'm a Christian myself, but it's become my belief that any time a political leader, any leader of a nation or group, starts making statement's about God's will requiring this or that, that it's time to run out the back door. It's a never good sign, only a bad one.

Unfortunately, I wish that the last election left me feeling more optimistic. Honestly, I would say that the backlash against the Republicans came across for some of the wrong reasons. If the war in Iraq were going better, I imagine a lot of this happened, and to me, the war in Iraq isn't really the issue. The way we conduct ourselves is the issue.

I'm basically ashamed of the Christian community in America. They have been entirely too supportive of acts which I consider unspeakable. The torture of people who in many cases are innocent is simply unacceptable, and any decent Christian should have risen up against it. For the most part, I would say few Christians really cared. They were willing to buy the government line, whatever it was, partly I think because of the religion and skin color of the people involved. Because some people who looked similar blew up the World Trade Center, we are prepared to overlook atrocities. The hypocrisy of it all is overwhelming.