Excuse us if we seem confused. We’re trying to come to grips with the strange feeling of deja vu.
It’s not merely that Glenn Beck has once again spewed his drivel, it’s his subject and reasoning that sent us reeling. His comments on the Japanese earthquake, which urged people to heed the disaster as a message from God, recall those made by Pat Robertson in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti more than a year ago. Beck didn’t denounce the Japanese for voodoo or pacts with the devil, of course, but he did advise people to follow the biblical Ten Commandments lest they do something to anger God into taking action.
The two are riffing off the same idea: They’re interpreting natural disasters as divine punishment for areas full of supposed sinners.
Let’s think carefully about this. If a divine being is sending earthquakes and tsunamis to people with track records of sin, what wouldn’t be flooded out? What would we have left? Hold on, Glenn, we need to grab our inner tube to prepare for the deluge. A better message to take from the tragedy is the strength of the human will. Or understanding the helplessness of mankind in the face of something so massive and uncontrollable. But that’s a humility lost on people who need to lower their heaven-pointed noses and drop the holier-than-thou attitude in order to feel and act like what they are — human.
