Pat Robertson, God’s Simp
In which the Divine announces plans for a major karmic
enema for all of organized religion, ASAP
SF Gate
Morning Fix, July 18, 2003
By Mark Morford — morningfix@sfgate.com
There he sits, face scrunched, eyes clenched tight, fists
balled up like he’s clinging to the last Valium on Earth, colon in tortured
knots, soul shriveled into a tiny black speck of bile and nothingness,
invoking God and sodomy and incest and quivering like he’s sitting on the
red-hot poker of divine enlightenment itself. You go, Pat.
You know this image. It appears regularly on the
noxiously quasi-religious “700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting
Network, one of those frightening and culturally surreal little cable channels
you skip over as fast as possible on your way to “The Daily Show” or maybe
“Taxicab Confessions” or “South Park.”
Pat Robertson is praying feverishly to his apparently
deeply homophobic and hate-filled Almighty, asking if He’d pretty please
stomp on over ASAP and forcibly remove three specific Supreme Court justices
from the bench and replace them with scowling conservatives who are equally
homophobic and quivering and desperately small minded as he is.
Apparently, it’s Pat’s patented 21-day “prayer
offensive” (not to be confused with his customary “offensive prayer”),
some sort of cosmic faux-Christian effort to oust those sodomy-condoning
judges who don’t agree with the Right’s hardcore anti-gay agenda and also
because apparently God only listens to sweaty bundles of self-righteous
indignation if you implore Him over and over again for three weeks straight.
Check the PalmPilot, man. God is busy.
Robertson is raving about his favorite demons, sodomy and
prostitution and incest, like he was caught in some sort of John Waters fever
dream, and it is absurd and sad and pitiable and yet because tens of thousands
of deluded heavily narcotized believers seem to actually listen and respond to
his words and send him wads of money, his pseudo-religious spasms makes
national news.
Because this is how organized religion works. God takes
sides. God favors certain worthy groups. This is how it works. God wears
stars-and-stripes underwear, brushes His teeth with macho NRA slogans.
It is timeless and time tested and insipid and Robertson
does it and Falwell does it and BushCo does it and Osama does it and Saddam
does it and the Shiites do it and Mormons do it and Israel and Palestine do it
and Scientologists, well, they don’t really do it because they believe in
creepy and very expensive alien cults featuring giant hunky posters of “Top
Gun”-era Tom Cruise.
God smites those who don’t follow His prickly
misinterpreted rules or who make the mistake of falling in love with someone
of the same gender or believe in the subtle and beautiful power of goddesses
or trees or magic or ancient ritual or the divine potency of sex or open-souled
personal _expression. Oh yes He does. Just look at Pat’s desperately earnest
little face. It must be true.
This is how God operates. He divides His time between
remaking the entire universe at all times in all dimensions for every living
creature everywhere, and giving a crap about whiny fundamentalist Christian
zealots and their toxic sex phobias.
God is customizable. God force-fits into whatever narrow
little channel of bilious self-righteousness the world’s fanatics and their
medicated perspective want Him to. This is the nature of God. He is supremely
convenient. He can be used to back up almost any claim. He is rubber and you
are glue and whatever you say bounces off him and sticks to you.
Alas, Pat is not alone. Huge indeed are the hunks of the
culture and of religious fundamentalism as a whole that fully and wholly
believe their particular version of God possesses exactly their very own set
of ragin’ intolerant lopsided values and hatreds and fiery finger-points and
if you don’t agree you are gonna burn and pay and cry.
Robertson is proof. Born-again George W. “God is on
America’s side” Bush is proof. Osama “Allah hates America” bin Laden
is proof. The Israel-Palestine conflict is proof. Falwell is proof and
Franklin Graham is proof and even the pope his own doddering self is sad,
semi-tragic proof.
That we are not quite ready to evolve. That we are not
quite ready to break free. That we are not ready for larger and more
enlightening and illuminating answers that don’t consist of narrow pinprick
quietly misogynistic worldviews that kill spiritual individuality and snuff
divine _expression and thwart love’s potential.
It must come straight back to the individual. As always.
Back to you, believing for yourself, defining God for yourself, locating
Him/Her/It inside the self, independent of doctrine and BushCo and snarling
military leaders and Pat Robertson’s sanctimonious little roadblock to the
progress of the human soul.
Because believing in God should not make you dumb.
Believing in divine power should not make you a blind lockstep jingoist zealot
right-wing homophobe drone, bowing and kneeling and feeling unworthy and
sinful and then changing the channel to ESPN2 and watching log rolling.
Believing in your own divinity should, of course, make
you radiate. And think. And squirm. And ponder and investigate and get calm
and wonder and explore and lick and drink good wine and make love to any
gender you like and allow that divine definition to shift and transform with
time and self and breath. Simple, really. And also very, very messy. As it
should be.
This just in: The divine is right now launching its own
offensive, called “Oh just shut the hell up you buncha bickering sexless
little faux-religious simps of the world.” Pat and Jerry and the organized
religions of the world were, understandably, unavailable for comment.
[Home] [Editorials] [Lawrence
v. Texas]
