The religious right in America is usually quick to characterize natural disasters in terms of divine retribution. We are now in the midst of a pandemic that might truly be called “biblical” and yet I have not heard any statements about God’s intention in inflicting the virus on us. I confess this may be due entirely to my disinclination to “doomsurf” and the fact that I am generally avoiding the news lately.
Mind you, I am not asking who you think God is punishing, but who the usual evangelical suspects think God is punishing.
They think God is punishing the wicked, and that there is collateral damage to good people like themselves, but it’s the fault of those wicked people, Democrats, gays, abortionists, illegal immigrants, you know, the usual suspects.
The NYT showed a cell-phone location-tracker map a day or two ago which showed which areas have been slowest to cease regular travel patterns. Some areas of the US show no change in travel at all. The map almost exactly covered the bible belt and trump-loving states.
Some of the earliest-affected states, the godless liberal ones, are at the beginning of plateauing. Washington in particular shows a distinct flattening of the curve. The coastal states have the best and earliest obedience to social distancing and cessation of non-essential travel, by far.
My point is that the very same people who pray for the punishment of everyone but themselves are going to be experiencing an extremely harsh lesson from the God of science (no bets on them learning anything though). They haven’t yet . So it is too soon to answer your question.
My view from outside is that it isn’t usually the religious right en masse who say “This is God’s punishment on…”
What I remember usually seeing is one or two prominent religious leaders/spokesmen assigning blame, and then their pronouncement gets picked up by the media and held up for scorn.
I honestly don’t know (and would be curious to find out) how many of the teeming religious millions actually buy into those “God’s punishment” explanations.
Well, in the middle of an unprecedented global challenge, the president of the United States put the CEO of a pillow company on national TV for some fucking reason and the pillow guy said that we should all read the bible. I guess God’s punishing people who don’t heed the words of the great philosopher-pillow king.
The only media attention I’ve seen recently being given to religious leaders is to those who are defying containment advice and insisting on holding mass gatherings of their followers. So while the religious leader may be the lead, it’s the crowd of followers who are the story.
The hardcore Evangelicals are beyond normal retribution at this point and are looking at this as being a sign that The Rapture is imminent. No word on when Big J is going to show up or what he’s going to say about the mess they’ve made of interpreting His Word.
If I were to believe in a Supreme Being, I wonder if I would think it made more sense to pray to him/her/it, or to resent them? If my G/dod(s) are all powerful and I am good, should I feel safe gathering in church with my fellow believers, or would my reluctance to do so color my belief?
I remember a humorous series of Youtube vids where God was portrayed as a somewhat out-of-touch pompous individual. In one his architect was saying, “What about childhood disease?”, and God said, “Keep it.” The architect said, “Really? We don’t HAVE to.”
Although this thread is more of a BBQ Pit type thread (and might get moved there soon,) the short answer is, people tend to believe God is punishing everyone except them.
Even though, in the time of Biblical Israel itself, God once punished Israel itself (such as sending a plague that killed 70,000 Israelites) even though only one or a few of them had sinned. (Of course, countless other times, God punished Israel for this or that with disasters, too.)
If and when the bible belt gets hit the hardest, they will either be oblivious to that fact much as they are oblivious to everything else, or will decry it as “fake news” in the style of Dear Leader.
Thanks for the laugh. I always enjoy these stories from the Great Clown Show that has somehow managed to insinuate itself into the position of America’s leadership.
