more on the buffoons...

Sorry for the time away ... I actually was well into this post yesterday when my computer restarted itself.

Anyway: last Thursday, I listened to Jerry Springer talk about the very quotes I mentioned in the previous post. And he made the point: if God cared so much about putting an end to terrorism (as in Colson's, "God sent Hurricane Katrina to show that we're not prepared for the next big attack!"), wouldn't it be easier for God to simply stop the guy with the back pack bomb, or the car filled with explosives? Duh! One well targeted heart attack would save a lot of misery, and certainly be a smarter and more creative approach than a devastating hurricane.

To Robertson's comments, it occurred to me that it is absolutely absurd to say God allowed or caused the hurricane as a defense against America's abortion rate. If that were the case, why devastate communities in Mississippi, one of the most difficult states in which to receive an abortion? There are only 3 or 4 locations in Mississippi where a woman can go for such a procedure (and none in Gulfport or Biloxi). Surely other "targets" would have made this point more clearly.

And here's more data (direct link not possible) to discount Robertson's ramblings as absurd: in Mississippi in 2000, 14% of all pregnancies and 16% of teen pregnancies resulted in abortion, accounting for .3% of abortions in the United States; Louisiana's share was higher, accounting for 1% of US abortions, but their percentage was lower, as 12% of all pregnancies and 13% of teen pregnancies resulted in abortion. If God were punishing America for legally allowing abortion, why hit states with proportionately low figures?

I was disappointed that Springer didn't pick up on Robertson's assertion that terrorists, too, act on God's behalf. But I want to follow up on Springer's comments a little further, because he made exactly the kind of statement I used to make after 9/11/01. While the usual suspects (Falwell & Robertson, e.g.) were busy blaming America, others were scrambling to show just how God was working to help. Look, they'd point out, the planes were relatively empty, and, My, an awful lot of people were late to work! God, they offered, was super-busy that morning, diverting traffic & resetting alarms, doing all kinds of things to stop people from winding up in harms way. Two responses scream back. First: What, then, do you say to the families of those who were killed in the attack? That God didn't care enough about them to protect them and save their lives? This shows their argument to be callous and presumptive, assuming to know something about how & why God 'saved' certain people from harm. Second: Instead of trying to effectively re-direct the lives of thousands of people, why didn't God just do something about the nineteen terrorists? This shows their argument to confess of some weakness of God's part, that God couldn't do this. God didn't even have to intervene on all 19 - for example, all God had to do was alert a handful of security guards of their presence, or cause a computer glitch to prevent them from boarding the planes while working in other ways to expose their plan. Don't misunderstand, I believe God was very much present and active, but one thing it appears clearly that God does not do is direct our day to day behaviors. And I assert that that is a good thing, that we are not simply marionettes on strings.