Part 4 of A Serious Discussion: A Broad Look

4.

The problem with what this Greenville, SC priest did is much more broad and universal than we may think.  At the end of the day, who cares if a priest announces that his parishioners should repent for voting for Mr. Obama?  What he said does not matter anymore, nor will it tomorrow: nor has it ever.  

What matters is this priest's rationale.  It is clear that the priest believes that voting for Mr.  Obama (or any pro-choice candidate) is evil, against God's will.  

But here's the problem, true believers:

How do we know what God's will is?

Hell, how do we know that God even has a will?  

The very idea that God has a preferred candidate or holds the United States in higher graces than other nations is nonsense.  How arrogant and simple-minded does one have to be to assume they know God so well?  

Fundamentalists of all kind seem to think that they have a direct line to God's penthouse, whether they be televangelists, FLDS members, suicide bombers or what have you.  They use this phrase, God's will, to justify their beliefs.  So who is wrong?  Who actually knows what God wants?  

If you believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God, isn't it counter intuitive in this case to claim that anything but an Obama victory was God's will?  If God is all-powerful, ever-present and all-knowing, how is Obama's victory not God's will?  I know so many people who went home and prayed for McCain's victory a couple Tuesdays ago.

So who was wrong?

Did God make a huge boner and accidentally give the election to Obama?  Did God foul this one up?  Was God wrong?

Or were they?

Or maybe the next three years are going to be seen as a test, like if God was telling us to take our kid up to the mountain and kill him, until the last minute when He pops out of a cloud and says "ZOMM, I was totally kidding...Just a test. PwNed!!".  Is God just pwning the fundamentalist Christian right or is it His will that Obama won?

What nonsense.  In all likelihood, God doesn't have a favorite candidate.  Or a favorite tv show.  Or a favorite ice cream flavor.  In all likelihood God created us and in His divine grace gave us the ability and tools to save ourselves.

Our hearts and our brains.

So instead of making crazy claims about which candidate God supports or who is going to hell let's stop for a second and think of what His will really is:  to lead a good life, to help more people than we hurt and to leave this world better than when we were brought onto it.

All of that other stuff...the words of clerics or priests, the books that are quoted nonstop, the small laws about what to eat or wear...all of that stuff is man's will.  It was that priest from SC's will that Obama lose.  It is his will that people not be able to participate in a crucial sacrament of their religion.  It is his will that the people who voted for Obama or support the right to choose are complicit in evil.

Not God's.  

In this life we will never come close to understand God, let alone God's will.