Church Night on the Malloy show takes a different tone in the wake
of last Friday's unspeakable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. Many families
and their friends and neighbors are doubtlessly gathered in their places of
worship tonight, seeking comfort and solace in their overwhelming grief. We,
too, offer our sympathies to the victim's families and mourn with the rest of
the nation as we try to accept the unacceptable -- that our rabid gun culture and
impenetrable gun lobbies have cost us another 26 innocent lives.
Mike Huckabee sees it differently. The former Arkansas governor and would-be republican president says the reason those 20 little children and the six teachers who tried to protect them were murdered because we don't pray in schools. God is mad, it seems, and has decided to slaughter children until we drop our science books and clutch our bibles during the school day.
"We ask why there's violence in our school but we've systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee told Fox News on Saturday. "Should we be so surprised that schools have become such a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability."
Huckabee is not alone. Rev. James "Focus on the Phallus" Dobson claims that God killed those children because He is upset over marriage equality and a woman's right to choose. Huffington Post quoted from his Family Talk radio program as he explained the reason behind the horrific act:
"I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too. And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on."
There are more. Too many more. Oddly, some of them also take up the tired-old second amendment argument that had the six female schoolteachers and staff been armed, then they all might be alive today. But then, that would be interfering with God's will, His vengeance on six-year-old children in retaliation to political policy involving gay rights, abortion, and lack of mandatory school prayer ... wouldn't it? I'm confused.
How can these self-avowed "Christians" believe in such a vengeful, hateful God? Does it offer them some kind of comfort or healing to believe God is poised in heaven, ready to activate an army of pyschopathic human killers to ban abortion, gay marriage, and enforce prayer in schools? How twisted is the Rapture Right? How does any of this madness square with the actual, peaceful teachings of Jesus?
Gandhi said it best -- I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
