God Damned

It would not be correct to say, “The devil made me do it.” Rather, what moved me to write this post was the coincidence in my reading this week of three people who had a problem with God.

The first I came across was that flypaper for idiocy Bill O’Reilly:

As CNN notes, O’Reilly has previously blamed the reports of his alleged sexual misconduct on the media, but now it looks as though he’s decided to throw shade at a higher power as well. “You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, I’m mad at him,” O’Reilly said on Monday during the latest episode of his web series, No Spin News. “I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didn’t happen. I can’t explain it to you. Yeah, I’m mad at him.”*

So, mad because God wasn’t his wingman. 

*

The second person with a problem with God was alleged actor Mark Wahlberg. I discovered his problem with God in yesterday’s edition of the Guardian’s satirical question-and-answer feature “Pass Notes”:

Name: Mark Wahlberg.
Age: 46.
Appearance: Contrite potato.
Why contrite? The actor is seeking almighty God’s forgiveness.
For what? For being in a film.
He’s an actor. Does he do this every time? A specific film. Speaking recently at a Catholic conference in Chicago, Wahlberg said: “I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because I’ve made some poor choices in my past.” When asked to elaborate, he said: “Boogie Nights is up there at the top of the list.”

So, the problem here is that God might just be a hostile Rotten Tomatoes type (always assuming that the heavenly being finds time off to visit the local cinema).

*

We have to go back in time 500 years for the third person with a God problem—Martin Luther. 

In the October, 30, 2017 issue of The New Yorker Joan Acocella, reviewing several books about the reformer, wrote how “this passionately religious young man . . . discover[ed] his anger against God” [emphasis hers]:

Luther spoke of his rage at the description of God’s righteousness, and of his grief that, as he was certain, he would not be judged worthy: “I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.”***

So, because Luther was certain of his own unworthiness, it was fine to hate the “righteous God.” 

*

A number of years ago, I found myself feeling sorry for God. “Poor God,” I said to myself. How he was being blamed for all the disasters in the world, for the murder of humans created in his own image no less. A destructive hurricane or earthquake, with thousands of people killed? It was God’s doing, prophets and preachers, rabbis and imams exclaimed, because of man’s sinfulness (usually nowadays due to gay marriage). 

A secondary thought I had was how chutzpahdic those prophets and preachers, rabbis and imams were to assume that they could read the mind, to know the reasoning, of the entity that was grand enough to create the heavens and the earth. 

*

I have found a way to free “Poor God” from the hatred, blame, and scorn that has unfairly come his way over time. I have decided to assume that the universe was not his creation (hence not his to be blamed for), but was created in an enormous explosion some five-billion years ago (although I haven’t exactly figured out the small details—I do have my scientists working on them).

And so now God can proclaim: “Free at last! Thank God Almighty (oops, sorry about that). I’m free at last!”

*** 

*https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/bill-oreilly-mad-at-god-sexual-harassment.html

**https://www.theguardian.com/film/shortcuts/2017/oct/25/will-god-forgive-mark-wahlberg-for-boogie-nights

***https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/how-martin-luther-changed-the-world

Grateful for the Dead

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

*

In my previous blogpost, “Re-enter the Loons,” I quoted Bill O’Reilly as saying that the upside of the murder of 58 people at the Las Vegas country music concert was that that was “the price of freedom. Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are.” Allowed to roam free with assault weaponry at their disposal. The dead, thus, had their use; they brought freedom for nuts and gun nuts. 

*

In the November 2017 issue of The Atlantic* Caitlin Flanagan investigates the death of Tim Piazza, a freshman at Penn State University, after a night of horrendous hazing by the brothers of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. In her article Ms Flanagan relates a conversation with Jud Horras, a former assistant secretary of the fraternity’s national organization and CEO of the North-American Interfraternity Conference, the trade association for social fraternities. 

I knew [Flanagan writes] he was not prepared for the hardest question I had for him, which I would return to over and over again: Why hadn’t Beta Theta Pi taken the simple, obvious steps that would have saved Tim Piazza’s life?

Horras defended the fraternity saying that 

at some point, you have to trust young men to make the right decisions. . . .  Giving members the freedom to [make poor decisions] was part of what the fraternity was about. If they screwed up and got caught—well, that was on them. 

But what about the death of Tim Piazza? 

Horras acknowledged that it was “a tragedy for him and his family.”  BUT

it would provide the industry with the impetus needed to make some necessary reforms. In fact, his death was a “golden opportunity.”

*

Ecclesiates tells us, 

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.

Apparently, when it is one’s time to die, others will find a purpose in one’s death—an opportunity to use it for their own ends. 

***

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/a-death-at-penn-state/540657/

Re-enter the Loons

Now I don’t know whether you’d want to chalk it up to pure coincidence or to some super power in the universe with a sense of appropriateness, but today I received in the mail the following:

Coming just days after the mass murder of concert-goers in Las Vegas by a gunman wielding a high-powered automatic attack weapon, the gift of “Prayer Flags” will allow me to indulge—together with so many politicos—in a round of after-the-fact thoughts-and-prayersing. 

I have not yet opened the envelope to determine what these “Prayer Flags” will actually do. Perhaps, unlike the hollow prayers of gun-moneyed politicians, these Tibetan artifacts will promise to be intercessory, which is

holy, believing, persevering prayer whereby someone pleads with God on behalf of another or others who desperately need God's intervention.*

Certainly, when someone is firing off round after round of ammunition your way, you would hope for a good samaritan’s prayer to make the lead arc harmlessly away or to impose itself—like Wonder Woman’s bracelets**—between you and the bullets.

*

Responding to the massacre in Vegas, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin tweeted:

Governor Matt Bevin ✔@GovMattBevinTo all those political opportunists who are seizing on the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for more gun regs...You can't regulate evil...10:38 AM - Oct 2, 2017

But then again he knows how to combat gun violence:

"Almost all were there, I think, because they genuinely want to be part of a solution," Gov. Matt Bevin said of a meeting he held in Louisville to call for prayer groups to help combat gun violence in Louisville on June 1, 2017.***

Frankly, I’d prefer Wonder Woman.

*

And then there’s Bill O’Reilly (you thought he’d vanish from the face of the earth after being ousted from Fox News?):

The NRA and its supporters want easy access to weapons, while the left wants them banned. This is the price of freedom. Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are. The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons.**** 

Think of all those Las Vegas martyrs to freedom—the involuntary Nathan Hales who gave up their lives so that more Americans in future can be blasted away in other venues by other weapon-toting freedom fighters.

All those Las Vegas dead who gave the “freedom” spouters the opportunity—once again—to drain the reservoir of thoughts-and-prayers, thereby mocking the wounds of the survivors and the tears of the loved ones of the murdered. 

***

• http://www.allaboutprayer.org/intercessory-prayer.htm

**"These bracelets have thus far proven indestructible and able to absorb the impact of incoming attacks, allowing Wonder Woman to not only deflect automatic weapon fire, energy blasts and other projectile weaponry, but also to absorb forces from a long fall."  Wikipedia

*** http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article176616521.html

****http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-oreilly-las-vegas-shooting_us_59d29fa5e4b048a4432481eb