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Friday, January 07, 2005

For the record: I NEVER said that I wanted to kill Pat Robertson

A few days ago I posted "Haul Pat Robertson's butt out of Virginia Beach... AND STONE HIM TO DEATH!!". It was in response to Robertson's annual penchant for claiming that God was speaking through him about the coming year. And it elicited some ... interesting... feedback.

Some got it and some didn't. A few were downright horrified. One guy wrote me that initially he thought I was a few cards short of a full deck to have the gall to publish something like that. But after reading the entire thing he said "that's was an f'ing work of genius!"

If all you saw was the headline - either here or elsewhere on the 'net where this was referenced - I strongly urge you to read it. ALL of it. And think about the REAL point that I was making with this. I do not want to see Pat Robertson stoned to death: unlike some Christians, I do strive to believe that every man (and woman) can grow and change and become more Christ-like so long as there's breath in his lungs. Having weaknesses of character - including such glaring weaknesses as Robertson illustrates - are no grounds for wanting to see someone dead. Neither are such things as differences of political or spiritual belief. And if you've taken the time to read the entire essay, you will realize fully well that I never did anything other than try to lead people to think about what it is we have to be... if we really want to wear the label "Christian" before the world.

Now, Pat Robertson and countless like him advocate the death and destruction of those not like them every day of their lives. And they are gosh-darned serious about wanting to see them dead. And nobody takes them to task on it: more often than not it's met with little more than a shrug, as if to acknowledge that "that's just the way things are."

Well, I refuse to accept the cruelties of this world as "just the way things are" without doing something about it.

My essay merely reflected back toward them the evil that Pat Robertson and those like him relish committing in the name of God. And if some people didn't like that, well, it's as Georg Christoph Lichtenberg put it:

"A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out."

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