If you're like Thee Optimist, you're kind of a religious fanatic. The Bible is real to you. It's like a history book.
Not so much the Gospels, where Jesus teaches about tolerance, humility, community, compassion, service, and above all, sacrifice.
No! Not that part.
More the Old Testament, where a vengeful and destructive God repeatedly gets irritated at the pride, the deceit, and the sheer degeneracy of humanity, and punishes them again and again and again.
He casts them out of the Garden, floods them, blasts them with fire, and with plagues and with pestilence, and sends the Angel of Death to take their children.
Sound familiar?
Yes. Unless you've been living under a rock, it's probably clear to you by now that God hates America, and is pounding us into submission, or possibly into dust.
Whichever comes first, I guess.
Oh? You haven't noticed this?
You didn't notice that more than a million people died of Covid in the past two years alone?
You didn't notice the two hundred thousand who died of drug overdoses in the same time period?
You didn't notice the historic drought and the firestorms (watch that video from about 1:55 on - holy moly!) that are consuming the western portion of the country?
You haven't witnessed the epic floods?
Or the attacks by our enemies, whoever they may be?
The people driven mad, and who have lost all understanding?
Or the Angel of Death, who keeps taking the children?
Man. You really haven't been paying attention, have you?
Make no mistake. God is pissed off. And He is pissed off at us. If the Bible is real, then nothing could be clearer.
People trapped on a New Orleans rooftop during the flooding of Hurricane Katrina. God is also taking our spelling skills away. |
What Are We Doing Wrong?
If you agree that God is punishing us, and given the preponderance of evidence, I'm not sure how you could disagree, then...
How do we make Him stop?
Well, we can't make Him do anything. He is God, after all.
We could supplicate and pray, but people do that all the time. It's not working. If anything, it's making matters worse. That's because people tend to pray for stupid things.
"Dear God, please give me a new Maserati."
Yeah... no. That's just going to irritate Him further.
The thing to do here is figure out what we're doing wrong, and then stop doing that.
Thee Optimist has done some Biblical-style thinking on this, has searched back through his awesome command of Scripture (hammered into him mercilessly during rigorous high school instruction), and has narrowed the problem down to three possibilities.
You're welcome.
Here they are, in no particular order:
A parade of filthy, degenerate Proud Boys. |
We Are Degenerates
Let's face it, if the Old Testament is any guide (and in fact, it is supposed to be the living Word of God), then God does not like degeneracy.
The most famous example of this, of course, is the destruction of the city of Sodom. Which, depending on who you ask, wasn't actually a condemnation of homosexuality per se, but instead a condemnation of the gang rape of male strangers, which was common in the ancient world.
Either way, the God of the Old Testament is always ready to pile suffering on those He sees as degenerates.
The Cambridge Dictionary definition of degeneracy is "behavior that shows low moral standards." So the question naturally arises: is there a more degenerate culture than America, anywhere on Earth?
From our overtly sexualized social media, to our endless invasions, threats of invasion, and wars abroad, to our death cult at home, to our racism and selfish individualism, we seemingly revel in our own immorality.
The United States has a checkered past, to put it mildly. But at one time, we at least paid lip service to the ideals of civic virtue. People who do that now are generally conmen and con-women, and their proclamations ring increasingly hollow.
If Thee Optimist were arguing our case before the Almighty, he would be struck dumb by the moral emptiness of our culture.
Then he would probably shrug and say, "Okay God, you're right. There's nothing worth saving. Nuke it."
Kim Kardashian, her face and body profoundly altered by plastic surgery, poses in a private jet, somewhere in the sky. |
We Worship False Idols
In the Old Testament (Exodus: 2:17, for the casual reader who wants to get right to the meat of the matter), God laid down ten basic laws for the Israelites to follow.
These are of course known to us as the Ten Commandments.
The scariest part, for Americans, can be found in Commandments #1 and #2.
Now, Thee Optimist often makes lists in no particular order, but he's pretty sure that God doesn't do this. God created the entire universe after all, it was a big job, and required a high level of organized task management.
When God makes a list, He puts things in sequence.
Commandments #1 and #2 are closely related, and are the highest priority Commandments. "Thou shalt not kill" is #6, by the way, to give you an idea of how God's mind works.
So what are these all-important Commandments?
#1. "You shall have no other gods before Me."
#2. "You shall make no false idols."
Yeah. Hmmm. That's bad. It's a problem.
Modern American society is a wasteland of false gods and cheap idols.
Millions of people are caught up in the cult of celebrity worship.
Millions of people are caught up in the cult of QAnon, elevating a carnival barker (himself a shameless degenerate) to quasi-savior status.
Millions of people are caught up in the cult of greed, mindlessly worshipping money, the pursuit of money, and the individuals who have amassed the most of it.
Meanwhile, those who have fallen through the cracks are stepped on and stepped over, left behind and forgotten.
Certain religious preachers, themselves conmen, have perverted religion to the pursuit and worship of money.
And of course, there's the ever-present cult around guns. Guns are sacred, and demand an ongoing blood sacrifice. Even the children must be sacrificed.
It's incredible how depraved and decadent this all is.
Oh God?
Yeah, just do it already.
It's the Wrong God
Here's one out of left field.
For all of my life, we have been in a clash of civilizations with the austere, hyper-conservative world of Islam.
They certainly think we are degenerates.
Now, the awful truth is this epic clash has everything to do with controlling important real estate in central and western Asia, and the massive natural resources found there.
Religion is somewhat tangential to the struggle, but serves as a convenient straw man for both sides.
We are Christian. They are Islamic.
We are forward-thinking (are we?). They are backwards, even medieval.
Now, here's something interesting. Through all of this, Thee Optimist has assumed (and the vast majority of scriptural scholars would agree with him) that God of the Old Testament and Allah of the Quran are in fact the same god.
Islam is the newer religion, and Abraham and Jesus are considered prophets in Islam.
But what if all this is wrong?
Certainly, extremists on both sides believe that the other side's god is an idol.
And certainly, many Muslims involved in this clash have spent a great deal of time chanting and praying passionately for the destruction of America.
Maybe they're praying to the real God, and the God we have is as fake as Zeus and Odin?
Bummer, if true.
Words of Wisdom
"The cliche that God hates the sin but loves the sinner is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first 50 Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth."
- D.A. Carson
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