Claiming that Putin is being used as an instrument of God in what is looking more and more like a genocide (if he cannot take Ukraine with the people there, he will simply remove all the people) to ultimately lead to the End Times which for whatever reason is definitely in Israel is so, so...completely on brand? He's excited that there's misery on tap for humanity. His comforting message: the God we're supposed to worship wants this, so relax and accept all the death. It's almost as if death and misery give his conception of God shape and form. As if his concept of God requires blood and barely exists without the terror by night. As if ethnic genocide and horror were planned by God with the exacting detail of a Kommandant with the entire earth as his camp.Pat Robertson came out of retirement to claim that Putin "is being compelled by God" to invade Ukraine in preparation for a massive End Times invasion of Israel. pic.twitter.com/Pmwybf57Ay
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 28, 2022
It takes away the human agency of Putin to not do horrific things, in the same way that John Hagee surrendered Hitler's human agency to God in declaring that he used Hitler to found Israel--again for the ultimate End Times purpose. Will history's monsters face eternal judgment if they were just meat puppets God is operating through? It seems like an ethos that gives monsters a pass at the expense of so many bodies that are "fulfilling prophecy."
And if God is good, then how is it He cannot achieve his ends without putting human lives through a meat grinder? Surely, a deity like that is to be feared, but how can one so monstrous be worshipped or loved? How can he be a comfort to the afflicted when he is the source of affliction? How can he be a savior when the model of his world is that his instruments are destroyers?
In a moment of war and tumult, imagine thinking this is exactly the time to peer out from one's retirement and say "More of this, maranatha!" The Good News is--bad news until we all snuff it.
It's folks like Robertson that are why Christianity and me aren't ever getting on. But it makes me wonder about people for whom this is their religion, the actual way they look at the world. There is a nihilism in it. Why do good at all? Why fight the good fight? The God who formed you in the womb also planned your eventual, necessary, and even potentially excruciating demise along with everyone you ever loved. How would you go through life? Would you be more inclined to do the right things, or find cosmic reasons why it wouldn't matter? Would you decide that siding with horror had a purpose; that God was working through the evil you had done?
I don't like the answers I see out there. But look at the old man. The specter of mass death livened his blood.
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Pat Robertson (1930) is coming up on 92, March 22. He is old, very old, his beliefs keep him away from pleasures while his age brings on pain and humiliation. He really, spiritually and as answer to his suffering, needs this to be the 'end times' for the world because his own personal end times are close at hand.
Some people are granted the grace, more like chose the grace, to accept the pain and humiliation of old age with humor, humanity. Overlooking the alternative, in time, we will all get old. I'm no spring chicken. I just hope I don't turn into a scolding, venomous, bitter old man like Robertson.
I often wonder about many right-wingers, do they really believe in the things they say or are they just fleecing the rubes.
Pat has let me know that he was not an act after all.
One of the things that leaves me coldest is understanding that a lot of people in the evangelical/End Times mindset are now actively engaged in politics and some are quite wealthy and connected. Learning about groups such as The Family and the Seven Mountains dominionists is very eye-opening, but for all this is up my street, it was not that long ago that I realized Betsey DeVos's father founded the Family Research Council, and her father in law was a major donor to Focus on the Family and AEI. Like the Scaifes or the Kochs, there are just a handful of billionaire dynasties that are funding the crap out of weirdly religious/retrograde anticommunist basically 1950s or prior modes of looking at the world. If Democrats have been trying to build bridges to the 21st century the past 30 years, these moneyed assholes have been trying to burn the bridges and row back to the 19th century.
When not trying to send us all to heaven or hell in a handbasket. I guess.
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