by Ethan Johnson
August 28, 2007
In our last episode, I thought I was being clever yet poignant when I said,
Show me the passage where Jesus said that a given tenet was good only for "some people." Show me the passage where Jesus wishes death on his opponents. I'm no theologian, but as I recall his slant was much more centered on people who engaged in, shall we say, wrong action having to live with the consequences of their actions. It was possible to stop sinning and put things right, but it was essentially up to the sinner to consciously make that decision.
Funny story - true story, ripped from recent headlines: Buena Park pastor asks followers to pray for the death of his critics.
No, really.
Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The request was in response to the liberal group's urging the IRS on Tuesday to investigate Drake's church's nonprofit status because Drake endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president on church letterhead and during a church-affiliated Internet radio show.
Drake said Wednesday he was "simply doing what God told me to do" by targeting Americans United officials Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming, whom he calls the "enemies of God."
"God says to pray imprecatory prayer against people who attack God's church," he said. "The Bible says that if anybody attacks God's people, David said this is what will happen to them. . . . Children will become orphans and wives will become widows."
Thanks to the magic of the social internet, a commentor at the frequently worthwhile weblog Slacktivist delivered the necessary comic relief (edited to fix typo):
In response to these "imprecatory prayers", Americans United for the Separation of Church and State issued a press release stating "Avada Kedavra".
(Explanation.)
Okay:
To follow on to Fred Clark's excellent commentary at Slacktivist, where Fred tweaks this pastor for charitably "seem[ing] to subscribe to some idiosyncratic beliefs about prayer", I contend that the issue is much larger, and dare I say more sinister. The question about who prays how and the efficacy of such methods is rather nickel-dimey compared to the much larger elephant in the room, namely the question of What God Wants, and probably as importantly, the methods by which these Wants were deduced.
As another commentor noted, the God of this embattled pastor is apparently akin to a mob boss. I don't have the inclination to re-hash my views on why I believe such reductionism to be a gross misrepresentation, let alone a disservice, but if you want to fill some time you can peruse them here and here, for example. In short, to claim to know the mind of God (such as something so vastly unknowable can have something so crude as a "mind") is code for "I am completely full of shit."
While we may not know the mind of God, it is a much simpler task to know the mind of mere mortals, such as pastors caught in the act of wrongdoing. Pastors who, rather than admit wrongdoing (everything is allegedly happening in the full sight of God anyway, so why dicker around?) and seek to make amends, use God the infinite and unknowable as cudgel and shield. Pastors who throw millennia of theology out the window in favor of crass, petty personal wants wrapped in the cloak of the almighty.
I think two conclusions may be fairly drawn without much fear of contradiction:
- "Pray for the deaths of others" is code for "I hope someone is feeling so incredibly stoked to serve the will of 'God' that he or she 'takes care' of these interlopers."
- "God" in the above sentence is synonymous with "Wiley S. Drake".
Back in the days of my career as a delivery van driver, I used to tell people that driving the van meant having the world's largest license plates. Because if you drove recklessly or committed other questionable acts of judgement on the roads people could make one phone call to the store and it would be pretty easy to figure out who did what. I say this because people who rise to the level of pastor (or equivalent) in their respective churches also bear the world's biggest license plates. Their own acts are tied irrevocably to their church, and their God. Pettiness and lawlessness on the part of Mr. Drake doesn't reflect poorly on himself alone, but his congregation, his church, and yes, his God.
Of course, a man who says something like this...
"I have never have been worried about the IRS," he said. "They don't scare me. I don't give a rip about the IRS. I don't believe in the separation of church and state and I believe the IRS should stay out of church business."
...pretty much forces the hand of his congregation to decide what and who they believe in. I'll be interested to learn the answer. <EM>
