editor's note: This column is dated, at least the specifics are. The phenomena plays itself out over and over though, seems we hear about it every week. I thought it was worth sharing.
David Heiller
I enjoyed
reading a couple quotes from football players after the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Indianapolis Colts on January 15. (2006)
Colts
kicker Mike Vanderiagt missed a field goal that would have tied the game with
21 seconds left. Vanderiagt commented, “I guess the Lord forgot about the
football team.”
Just
before that, Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis had fumbled the ball, almost costing his
team the victory. His teammate Hines Wardsaid, “The Man above, He really looked down on Jerome and
said, ‘I’m not going to let you end your career on a fumble like that’.”
So I guess
football players know what God is thinking. Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, does also. At a Martin
Luther King Day speech in New Orleans on January 16, 2006, Nagin said “This city
will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”
But Nagin
and the jocks don’t hold a candle to televangelist Pat Robertson.
He thinks that God had a hand in the stroke that
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon suffered recently. “He was dividing God’s
land,” Robertson said of Sharon. “And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister
of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations,
or the United States of’ America.”
Orlando, Florida, is in trouble
from the Big Man too, Robertson feels. The city hosts an event called Gay
Days, and that’s a no-no. “I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the
way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in
God’s face if I were you. This is not a message of hate—this is a
message
of redemption. But a condition like this will bring
about the destruction of your nation, It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll
bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”
And then
there are those chumps in Dover, Pennsylvania who had the gall to hold a democratic
election to elect a school board that did not support teaching intelligent
design in its science classrooms. Big mistake. “I’d like to say to the good
citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you
just rejected him from your city” Robertson said. “And don’t wonder why he hasn’t
helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if
they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the
case, don’t ask for His help because He might not be there.”
I’ll try
my best to summarize God from all of these comments. He (not She) does not like
homosexuals, Ariel Sharon, democratic school board elections, white people in
New Orleans, or the Indianapolis Colts, And when He doesn’t like things, he reacts
with crippling medical conditions, disasters, terrorist bombs, earthquakes,
tornadoes, possibly meteors, and missed field goals.
I never
knew God was such a racist Mean Cuss, or such a big football fan. But I’m still
betting on the Steelers.
