“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools, should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” Mike Huckabee on Fox News
While we were still trying to take in the news of the massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut, Mike Huckabee repeated the refrain that senseless tragedies occur because we do not allow God in schools. But what kind of God would need human prayer to intercede in such a situation? What kind of God would not protect children as punishment for insufficient grovelling? A God who required human belief to act could not have created our world, because there would have been no one to ask Him or Her to make it in the first place.
To say violence happens because children are not taught to believe in God might make sense if the school children had attacked the gunman and not the other way around, but the statement is ludicrous in this context. A God who would let innocent children suffer because they were born in an immoral nation would be a monster unworthy of anyone’s praise. Instead, I think we must look at ourselves if we want to understand this tragedy. A nation that finds money to arm itself to the teeth, but does not find money to treat the mentally ill, has written its own tragedy.
Our nation is tearing itself apart not because we haven’t allowed God to come into our schools, but because we do not allow justice to rule in our hearts.
The notion that those that populate the public schools are not praying, is political silliness and simply not true. Having said that, I have no connection with Huckabee’s beliefs: jump through these hoops, pray like this, believe this, say that, are too shallow to bring insight to many of us. To claim, as he does, that those who don’t believe as he does are wrong, shuts his eyes to the problems of the world that Christianity and other faith traditions are well founded to help solve. Striving to live the kind of life that Jesus’ ministry might help more. Not believe, as I do. But reach out to help those who need it. Sit with and love the unloved, the foreign, the different than us. Listen more and speak less. Assist and love the poor the infirmed, the aged, the outsiders.
It’s not just all politics that’s local. All change is local. It begins with you. It begins with me.
On the way home, Owen said, “If God is better than us and made us in our image, why are we expecting him to be worse than us? If we do good things and try to help people, why would we expect God to punish people and make disasters happen if he’s supposed to be better than we are?”
I wish more adults could think as deeply as Owen.
God’s “Ways” are not our ways (2 Isaiah) and clearly they are not Mike Huckabee’s ways either. I like your quote about our nation arming itself to the teeth. but not caring for its mentally disturbed – I plan to quote you on this one- and I think you should forward it to Pres. Obama cause he’s looking for answers according to his sermon last night. But hey, what if the inmates are running the asylum?