Wednesday, March 16, 2011

"Loving Christians" Pile On Saying God is Punishing Japan

Frankly, if anyone is deserving of God's punishment, it would seem to be the hate-filled modern day Pharisees of the Christian Right who increasingly seem incapable of common decency much less empathy or concern for their fellow humans. These people make Christianity an uglier and uglier cult with ever passing day. Given the immense human suffering that is at this moment transpiring in Japan, one would think some minimal modicum of decency would prevail. But such is not the case. Not amongst the "godly Christian" set. Exhibit A and Exhibit B are Cindy Jacobs (pictured above), a self-congratulatory nut job Christianist and Malcolm McGregor III, a candidate for El Paso, Texas, City Council. As Right Wing Watch reports, Jacobs is bellowing that God is punishing Japan for its "deep idolatry and the worship of hundreds of idols under the guise of Shintoism, Buddhism, and allegiances to being "sons of the dragon." Meanwhile McGregor - who is vitriolic anti-gay - is likewise chiming in that God is punishing Japan for its failure to be blessed by protection. If Jacobs and McGregor represent the face of Christianity - and they certainly do represent far right Christianists - my query is who would want to embrace such a foul and inhuman belief system? First a sampling of Jacobs' foul verbal diarrhea via Right Wing Watch:
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Like her close colleague Chuck Pierce, who yesterday declared that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan was an attempt by God to topple "a stronghold of spiritism," Cindy Jacobs weighs in on the tragedy to declare that Japan has always been a "hard group for the gospel" because it was rooted in idolatry - even the island itself "looks like the head of a dragon" - and so God is trying to shake the nation because "the Holy Spirit wants to breathe the wind of revival across Japan and bring a mighty spiritual awakening to the land of the rising sun with healing in His wings":
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My interpretation of this is that while God did not want people to perish, He is going to use this to "pierce" the darkness surrounding the Japanese people if we will cry out to God for them in the midst of this crisis ... If we respond correctly, the darkness and the grip of idolatry of all forms that has blinded the eyes of so many in Japan will be broken off of them. The faithful believers in Jesus Christ will be strengthened as they are used for great harvest across Asia and the face of the earth.
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Then there's McGregor. Here are highlights from the Advocate on the mindset of this "loving Christian" who wants to be on El Paso's City Council:
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One of several antigay candidates running for the El Paso city council says he believes the tsunami and earthquake in Japan are a curse from God.
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“Japan had built tsunami walls along their coasts but this tsunami was bigger than that. No matter what you say, they either weren’t blessed with protection or they were cursed with an earthquake,” Malcolm McGregor III told ABC7.
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According to the Dallas Voice, McGregor is a member of the antigay El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values, which sponsored a successful ballot initiative to rescind domestic-partner benefits that had approved by the city council.
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Once again, I find myself firmly agreeing with Anne Rice: If these individuals are what being a Christian involves, then I have absolutely no desire to ever be considered a Christian ever again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I begin to wonder if these people are even human. What kind of decent human chortles and takes perverse delight in the pain and suffering of others?

And this is also just another case of people in glass houses who shouldn't be throwing stones. Those folks don't worship God, they worship the bible. They've set it up on a pillar, declared it perfect and infallible, and that is what they worship: a book. God has nothing to do with their religion.

Carole said...

As horrid as these people are, there are just a few of them compared to the hundreds of thousands of religious people (of many faiths) who are giving and trying to respond to this disaster. We need stories of those who are helping.