Reverend Hagee's Hitler Problem and Mine: God, Could You Email Me Offline?

Babylonian creation stories described a slithery evil water goddess who tried to annihilate mankind by sending a deadly flood. We are saved after an epic battle by a friendlier god. As Jack Miles recounts in his beautiful God: A Biography, early polytheist myths resonated in later monotheistic traditions, in which God the creator-destroyer must fuse so many beautiful and frightening features of our present world.

Every religious community tries to make sense of the suffering, evil, and tragedy around us. These basic questions lead people to religion. Every community gropes to find plausible answers. One hopes for consoling and humane answers. Sometimes these hopes are disappointed.

I knew little about Rev. John Hagee until I read Sarah Posner's engrossing book God's Profits. Hagee leads a group called Christians United for Israel. CUFI is often described as stridently pro-Israel -- a term which is only accurate if one believes that intransigent right-wing policies improve Israel's long-term security.

Erudite reporter and commentator Gershom Gorenberg has extensively covered the Christian Zionist movement. He has given two remarkable Fresh Air interviews that tell the story well. His http://southjerusalem.com">website includes these and other terrific materials. I must have been living under a rock not to have heard this before. The more I learn about Hagee and others, the more I want to climb back under.

Rev. Hagee sees many links between our present day and the Book of Revelation -- surely the first bad acid trip on record. In case you've been under a rock, Jews can be flattered that we play a special role in Hagee's eschatology. We must gather in Israel to hasten the arrival of Armageddon. Don't ask what happens when that conflagration actually comes.

Hagee's feelings about Catholics are equally spectral, but much less pleasant. His repeated descriptions of the Catholic Church as "the whore of Babylon" were widely known. When millions of Catholic voters heard about this in a campaign season, Hagee apologized in an open letter to the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, a conservative pressure group that itself doesn't set records for tolerance.

Hagee's letter would be a terrific apology for an awkward gaffe. It doesn't begin to account for a detailed and nasty theological scheme he has regularly espoused over many years. With a flair for understatement, he added: "I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful." The League quickly forgave him, to the obvious relief of the McCain campaign.

I hope he marches down the long list of others he has gratuitously offended. Here is a sampling of his philosophical investigations, reported by Katie Halper.

"Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick.

I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans...[T]here was to be a homosexual parade there that the Katrina came.

Then God sent a hunter... Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people, but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth, and it is the truth. How did hit happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.

Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit but they can't reproduce."

Three things are clear from such comments.

First, many of Hagee's comments don't make sense, even within his own worldview. I would have expected him to cheer when gay people exit from the gene pool. Even at the University of Chicago, the lines of young men buying the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue suggest that gay recruiting drives pose no immediate demographic threat.

Second, many Republicans and Jewish leaders used terrible judgment in associating themselves with CUFI. Senator Lieberman is (still!) slated to speak to CUFI's this July. He and everyone else who palled around with Re. Hagee should be ashamed.

Third, Hagee's politically self-immolating comments about Hitler are not quite what they seem. He genuinely mourns Hitler's victims. Within his own particular eschatology, the Holocaust was a sad required milestone on the way to Judgment Day. As he recently commented:

The fact is that all people of faith have had to wrestle with the question of why a sovereign God would allow evil in the world. After Auschwitz, this question became more urgent than ever.

Many people simply could not explain how a loving God would permit such horrors. After the Holocaust, they abandoned their faith...

But I and many millions of Christians and Jews came to a different conclusion. We maintained our faith in a sovereign God who allows both the good and the evil that is in the world. We therefore search the scriptures for an explanation of that evil.

Hagee is not stupid or crazy. It is only his worldview that leads him to the occasional stupid or crazy place. He is grappling with questions that have vexed everyone from Job to Mother Theresa. He is neither the first nor the last to find bad answers here. Just the other day, Sharon Stone claimed that China's earthquake reflects bad karma over the Tibet issue.

Like others who speak with frightening certitude about God's plans, Hagee regards his secret knowledge as providing license to express horrible views towards other people. I'm more upset about his sexism, religious chauvinism, and loathing of gay and lesbian people than I am about his eccentric theological views of the Holocaust.

Hagee should learn from that same Catholic Church he so harshly condemns. At Vatican II, it opened its heart and affirmed religious freedom, tolerance, and other precepts of a diverse, democratic society. This transformation was never as sweeping or as complete as liberals hoped to see. I remain appalled by Church positions on contraception and other matters. Yet the Church does not talk about people with the brutality that Hagee does. Providing compassionate ministry to millions of suffering people, the Church does not claim to know whether or how atrocity and tragedy advance God's plan. My devout wife tells me: "God does not move us around like pieces on the chess board, although we sometimes wish God would." This seems the only humane religious stand.

I myself am increasingly angry with God. This is not logical, since I am an atheist. Maybe other nonbelievers feel the same. Oddly enough, Rev. Hagee's questions identify my dilemma. We see God's face in the rainbow after the flood, in the grimy, exhausted face of the fireman pulling a child from the shattered building. Yet where is God herself? Some claim to see her scowling face in a hurtling wall of seawater, or in two grinding tectonic plates consuming a school. If we believe in a personal God who acts through human history, how can we be sure that they are wrong?

God, could you email me?
My editor assures me that God is a regular reader. So, God, I'll ask you directly: A five year-old girl is calling you from the Irrawaddy Delta. She is hot and thirsty. Her belly is distended. I'd like to pray, but I can't when I don't believe you are answering. You regard our suffering from afar in stony silence. How can I know you care? I have wondered since childhood how Adolph Hitler could have been one of your children. I've never received a satisfying answer. Could you email me offline to clear this up?

So far, the only response I've received was from God's press secretary, conveyed through a devout acquaintance, Mr. Gorenberg. The spokesman reports: "God is busy for the next day (a thousand human years) trying to figure out how the crown of her creation, human civilization, came to include such evil. She will respond to Her email afterwards."

Darned press secretaries. Given my age, doesn't he know that I'm operating on a fifty-year deadline here?

Comments

[researcher]

"God is busy for the next day (a thousand human years) trying to figure out how the crown of her creation, human civilization, came to include such evil. She will respond to Her email afterwards."


here is your email but i guarantee you you will not understand it.


evil is based in ignroance of our true reality but without that ignorance there is no world as we know it.

if god made us perfect that would be duplication of its oneness not the creation of unique beings.

the origin of our ignorance is innocence without that innocence you and I do not exist as perceived separate unique beings.

for you to be you and me to be me we are created unaware of our true reality. another name for unaware is ignorance.

told you you would not understand.

god bless you.

[LivingStardust]

Semantic distortion. If one's world view is insane, that person is insane when they act upon it like Hagee, Q.E.D.. An incorrect frame of reference is incorrect no matter the cause. He's nuts. An evangelical end of timer with no higher goal than the destruction of the world to fulfill his religious ambitions to not only meet Jesus and God personally, but to say to the rest of the world "I'm 'saved'. I'm special, you're not." At best it's a personality disorder, at worst it's psychotic.

Any MAN who tells you they have divine will and wisdom figured out and cornered is either insane or criminally manipulative or both for this simple reason: a god by definition is not constrained by the laws of the physical universe and is ergo not comprehensible to a mortal human who is by definition constrained by the laws of the physical universe. There is no frame of reference to make a God's Will understandable other than the frame of another God. It's like a fish talking about avionics. Incomprehensible. Period.

Humans are small, insignificant creatures in the physical universe who have NO IDEA WHAT A GOD IS/WANTS/CAN DO/WILL DO/NEEDS MONEY/ETC. If they say they do, they are LYING - to you and often themselves. Deal with it.

[BADEN]

The God you are trying to communicate with is the MALE form of creation.
The FEMININE form doesn't do that kind of damage to the creation.

You got the wrong number.
Try again.
Good luck.

[nyboomer]

Hagee's love for Jews is based on his hopes that Israel will commit national suicide at some point in the future so that his fantasies of redemtion may come true.

Such religious people do not enhance the experience of the living because they only see a future in death and poste mortem ressurection. Their lives are filled with incomprehension based on failing to understand the actions or inactivity of a non-existent supernatural being.

There is no future for them that is not based in the death and destruction of humanity as it currently exists. They find those of us who are alive to be unworthy of that state and feel that all who are yet to be born will be corrupted in the same fashion they have been.

[dmack]

I read an article in the New York Times. Hagee wants us to invade Iran to begin bringing Jesus back. I, as an Army veteran find this troubling, to say the least. This man wants more of my brothers-in-arms in harms way, to possibly die, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iranians, just to fulfill his interpretation of Bible prophecy. Meanwhile, his son, who is of age, sits there and hides in Big Daddy's mansion. If Hagee believed what he says, then his son should be the first to go. No easy assignments. He should be right there on the front line. If Hagee sees his son come home in a box, disfigured, or psychotic, then just maybe that warmonger would begin to understand that soldiers are people, not machines. Their lives have value. They are someones father, mother, daughter, or son. If people aren't willing to send their children to die, then stop volunteering other people's children. The fact that Hagee's son sits here in comfort while Hagee himself promotes war shows that he's no a champion of the Church. He is a pathetic coward.

[bknott]

Why can't we accept that if there is a God, or cosmic force that brought us into being, we can't possibly be evolved enough to have any understanding of it?

My cat's idea of what I do when I'm away from home is probably closer to the truth than the Bible's version of God.

[LollieDotCom]

Love the cat comment. True and funny.

My dog understands me a lot better than I understand God.

If there is a god, whether he be etherial or some space man's 13 year old and we're last years science project..... no matter, I know God made sure we had love, because without love, there's no conflict and without conflict, we're really boring. Every angry word we ever write is written because we love something. I love the idea of a healthier America. That's why I write to superdelegates, the few real journalists left in this country, and at the huff post.

[KillTheMessenger]

Stupid is what stupid does. Crazy is what crazy does. By that simple and effective formula the "good" Reverend and thousand of others like him who infest the pulpits of this nation are both.

We don't need any more apologies for these people. They are not teaching the word of God. They are only releasing the thoughts of their own sick minds.

If you are angry with God, you have had insufficient theological education. May I suggest taking a few years of religious studies with a good Catholic Priest (no, not the ones that are lusting after little boys) or, even better, a Rabbi? They will put a firm rest to all the theological misconceptions about God that can lead to this anger. The alternative is being an agnostic. Works just fine for me, although for matters of moral guidance I like to fall back on Catholicism. Sin is not such a bad concept if it is applied right.

[crotairlogan]

Please remember that the kingdom is within. We really don't need experts to take responsibilty
for the messy way we try to make sense of our lives. what you do you do. No regrets

[Liberal2]

So what you're saying is indoctrination is the answer? Ya know, Marxist leaders have the same quaint notion. There is more chance of Zeus existing than your god.

"...If you are angry with God, you have had insufficient theological education...." ? Bullshit, any god that offers one tribe the land of others if and only if they kill every man, woman, and child, ain't worth piss.

Catholism and moral guidance? You obviously had an insufficient education in catholic history. "Lordy," boy, their leader served as a nazi soldier. You think being against contraception is a moral position?

Go away, come back when you're an adult.

[EvgenyLibek]

If there were a God, she would have made her case to the entirety of humankind -- otherwise, she cannot claim to be the loving God of all people.

Any decent lawyer would easily destroy the case for Hagee's God.

However, the profound message of Jesus (a man whom Hagee claims to be God's Son) -- essentially the golden rule plus an almost irrational forgiveness -- is not so easily refuted.

This ideal belief is shared by nearly all religions, and, I dare say, the vast majority of atheists and agnostics.

Not so with the Almighty God of Rev.Hagee -- whose job is to punish the Palestinians, gays and lesbians, the Jewish people, Catholics, etc.

The concept of ONE GOD used to mean, "no God but the God of all mankind."
Now, it seems to mean, "no God but mine."

In so distorting the power of the ONE GOD concept, religion has become nothing more than a fantastic means to manipulate human behavior (commonly for evil purpose).

If anybody believes that God could justify sending Hitler to torment a people, purely to make good on the absurd prophesies of Revelations, what intentional harm might that person be capable of rationalizing?

Bah, what's the point -- until the vast majority of people are ready for such a discussion, Jesus will remain a hand-puppet for the agents of intollerance.

...or smarter people will need to invent a new version of God, which is not so easily hijacked.

[KillTheMessenger]

Good take on it. But God can not be hijacked. Only the minds of people who want to believe in God but don't know how to can be hijacked. Hagge et al are hijackers of human minds, not of Gods.

[Liberal2]

"...but don't know how...." What a brilliant piece of misdirection. It ain't the stupidity of belief, they simply don't know how to believe. Heh, try explaining *WHY* anyone should "believe." Your call is to substitute indoctrination for justification.

My alternative is to look around and see that reality is knowable. People once "prayed" for rain; today, weather satellites tell us whether there a chance of rain or not.

My problem isn't that you are stupid enough to "believe," but you may convince some poor shmuck to believe when there is nothing to believe in. And that poor shmuck will think his life sucks because his "faith" isn't strong enough and end up hating himself.

Curiously enough, Haggee thinks *YOU* don't know how and what to believe and that's why you disagree with him. You're both wackos.