Yes, God Will be Mocked


Yes, God Will be Mocked

Listen to the religious fundamentalists and they will warn you that God will not be mocked. Usually, this is about abortion and homosexuals and a society that tolerates both. These two issues alone, apparently, mock God, and his acolytes are here to remind us of the horrible things that will happen because of it.

But God will be mocked, and he has been mocked repeatedly. Human slavery mocks God, despite the strenuous efforts of more than few clergyman in the American South who were quick to point out that the Bible doesn’t condemn slavery but tries to “ameliorate it.” This is a fiction, of course, but as the inhumanity that is slavery became more and more uncomfortable to reasonable people, it would seem that outlawing it forever was mocking God. He didn’t do much about it, though, and naturally, his apologists tried to turn it all around and insist that he really *wanted* slavery to be banished all along. And in this day and age, while we have politicians who seem to admire slavery or treat it like it wasn’t really that bad, even these morons would be hard-pressed to say “yes” to the question if outlawing slavery was mocking God.

And God will be mocked, as he is on a daily basis, by the thousand small and petty cruelties that people inflict on one another. Your job as a talk-show radio host is a platform to lie all day, every day: to your audience, to yourself, all in order to make a political point about someone you dislike. God is mocked that way, but no one every comes out to call it for what it is. No, that’s reserved for abortion and homosexuals.

God has been consistently mocked by the mechanized killing of other human beings. God was mocked each time members of the Einsatzgruppen lifted their automatic machine guns and mowed down scores of defenseless men and woman in freshly dug pits. Then unceremoniously covered up. “But that was war,” says the religious fundamentalist. “Abortion and homosexuality are particular affronts to God.”

God was clearly mocked when his creations harnessed the power of the Sun to vaporize over 100,000 human beings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But abortion and homosexuality are worse.

God was clearly mocked when black men were lynched and left hanging on trees for having been accused of some crime that all-white juries quickly adjudicated and beamed at the killers when the “not guilty” verdicts were read out. But abortion and homosexuality are worse.

God was clearly mocked when scores, no, thousands of people were “disappeared” in Latin America under dictators like Augusto Pinochet, to lie in graves never to be recovered. All backed by officials in Washington, D.C. who considered themselves very good Christian men and went to church and knew God forgave them for aiding and abetting these criminals because they had to fight Communism. But abortion and homosexuality are worse.

God is mocked daily by the actions of the self-righteous fundamentalists, whose loathing for humankind is cloaked under the guise of “loving the good,” or “being saved by grace.” The mocking of God is not only in Big Events that shock people: it is in the everyday, petty cruelties that you all perpetuate. Every time you knowing lie to people, every time you say “up is down” to deceive people, make light of rape, dismiss slavery as mere “entrepreneurship” that really harmed no one at all. Every time you egg on brother against brother, you hamper people from having a fair shot at work or a chance to move up, all the rules you put in place to deny people healthcare, voting, housing: these are the daily mocking of God that you pile up day after day under the delusion that abortion and homosexuality are worse.

The judgement of your God comes from these things, not in your pet causes and prejudices. These are the things that will be weighed against you. And because of that, you should be far more worried than vilifying some woman having an abortion or a homosexual who lives down the street.

But you’ll convince yourself otherwise.