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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThere is just one thing I want to say to Mike Huckabee
and then i will be on my way:
If indeed God exists, then God IS in the schools. What is not in the schools is your church. And that is as it should be.
I don't know if I count as a "person of faith." My belief in the existence of God is day to day. Nevertheless, I was raised Catholic, and go to church, and am having actually a surprising number of conversations with my daughter about God these days, and when I see someone like Mike Huckabee trotting this "God did this to punish us for abandoning Him" bullshit out, all I can say is: to say that God is not in our schools just because public schools do not coerce our children into praying to God in language of which you approve is not only an insult to our children and their teachers, but an insult to God. And when you say that this putative absence of God from our schools is responsible for the mass-murder of 20 children and 6 of their teachers and administrators, that goes way past insulting, offensive, or any of the other terms we normally use to describe an asinine public comment from an asinine elected official.
Because if God exists, then God has to be bigger than your petty political bullshit. If an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God exists, then God cannot possibly be bound by your tiny-hearted rules or your tunnel vision. If such a God exists, then neither you nor I can tell that God where to be or what to do or who to bless.
If such a God exists, that God would not slaughter twenty children out of some kind of generalized anger or nonsensical logic. That is the kind of thing human beings do.
If God exists, then God is with and in our children and their teachers, whether or not they are saying what you think they should be saying, whether or not they believe what you believe. If God exists, then God is with us at the worst and darkest times of our lives--not to miraculously intervene and save the innocent from evil, because clearly in this world that does not happen, but to love and sustain and bear witness to the suffering of those who are beyond the reach of human help and comfort. If God exists, then God was with and in the children in those classrooms at Sandy Hook, with and in those who lived and with those who died. If God exists, then God was with and in the adults who risked and gave their lives for those children. If God exists, then God is with them all now, the living and the grieving and the dead.
And I really hope right now that God does exist, because there are a lot of people out there who need more help than humans can give.
The Plaid Adder
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)and indeed their citizens are less religious than in the US.
But they do not have school mass murder on a regular basis.
Only we do.
Plaid Adder
(5,518 posts)We have mass shootings in schools because people have easy access to assault weapons in this country. I'm just saying that even if you look at it theologically, Huckabee's bullshit is still bullshit.
The Plaid Adder
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)however the religious right in this country has not prospered on a loving God.
They have prospered by preaching about a God who will smite you not love you.
And only if you follow their brand (and I use the word deliberately) are you going to be saved.
Ratty
(2,100 posts)He's blaming this on a lack of state-mandated prayer in school (to a Christian God and/or Jesus one presumes) but he doesn't really say what would happen if we DID have prayer in the schools.
Is he saying that would be the end of death on school property? Or just no more murders at school ever? Or if he conceded there might be an occasional murder at school - even at a prayerful god-fearing school - it just won't ever be children. Or at least never more than one child at a time. Will God restrict himself to a quota? No prayer in school: mass murders everywhere. Prayer in school: no mass murders more than once every 10 years.
So many ways to dissect his idiotic remark. Wish some interviewer would take his comment seriously and at face value and ask him questions like these. Make him clarify in numbing detail every aspect of his claim.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,636 posts)Yeah, you already know.
Fuck you, Mike.
Plaid Adder
(5,518 posts)rustydog
(9,186 posts)Buns_of_Fire
(17,181 posts)in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (paraphrased): God can reside as easily in the circuits of a computer as in the petals of a lotus. To think otherwise is to demean God.
sellitman
(11,607 posts)Spot on.
May i post this on my FB?