I Hate What You Just Said

I discovered this bit of wisdom while trolling the official website of Pat Robertson. On a page entitled “Bring It On: The War on Terror,” one of Pat’s viewers wrote in with this fantastic question:

I hear so many people saying that Jesus would just turn the other cheek in terms of Iraq. Is Jesus a pacifist? I know He turned over the tables in the Temple, but do you believe that Jesus would ever go to war?

Pat’s Response is illuminating:

Jesus said if somebody strikes you on the cheek, you turn the other cheek. If somebody forces you to go one mile, you go two. If he takes away your coat, give him your shirt. Resist not evil is what He taught His people and His disciples, but He was not necessarily talking about governments.

The apostle Paul said, “He who wields the sword wields it not in vain, for he is a minister of God to bring justice or judgment against the ungodly, against the kidnapper, against the murderer.” The thought of a police force and military use of force was certainly in the apostle Paul. You recognize that the first gentile convert was a Roman centurion. He was essentially a captain; he had a hundred men under him. He was the first one that the Holy Spirit fell on. Also, there was a Roman officer that Jesus talked about. He said, ‘I haven’t found such faith, no not in all of Israel.’ He never told that man to quit the army. He never told him to be a pacifist.

I don’t think pacifism, as such, is biblical. For the individual Christian, yes. We don’t kick back against offenses against us. But in the collective sense of a government or of a world order, there has to be something to restrain evil.

Robertson’s clinic on the logical fallacy begins by essentially agreeing that Jesus preaches a message of pacifism, even requiring that his “individual” followers “resist not evil”; then, in an attempt to obscure this admission, Robertson suddenly mentions a passage of scripture from the apostle Paul which may or may not relate to “military use of force” but certainly not to Jesus’ view on pacifism; and finally, in the coup de grace, Robertson injects his own personal opinion that he doesn’t “think pacifism, as such, is biblical.” Robertson has just performed the three-step process that is the hallmark of all fundamentalist hermeneutics whereby subjective opinion is miraculously transubstantiated into the Word of God.

Jesus’ statement that his followers should not only “turn the other cheek” but “resist not evil” is indeed a difficult teaching as it applies not only to mere slaps on the face but to suicide bombs and hijacked airplanes flown into skyscrapers. But according to Robertson’s reasoning (and I use that term generously), this directive of Jesus only pertains to “individuals,” not to “governments.” I want to ask Pat why he doesn’t think governments are made up of “individual” people? And, if they are acting as “individual Christians” separately, how can government officials collectively slap, kick, torture, bomb and kill evildoers with impunity? Why can groups of Christians (or nations or “world orders”), if they are working together, nullify the statements of God?

We must ask: does this “collective override” Robertson articulates extend to Jesus’ other teachings? Apparently the Bush administration thinks so; they’ve taken Pat’s biblical hermeneutic to heart as they collectively lie, cheat, covet, steal, despise the poor, and destroy the environment.  (Apparently that’s ok if you atone by giving up golf).

Robertson’s only shred of evidence that Jesus was not opposed to state-sponsored violence is that Jesus “never told” a Roman centurion “to quit the army. He never told him to be a pacifist.” First, this is a pathetic argument; just because Jesus didn’t explicitly say something doesn’t mean that he endorses it. Since Jesus never proffers a specific opinion on homosexuality, then he must want us to practice it? I’m sure Pat wouldn’t want us to universalize his reasoning strategy in this case. Secondly, Robertson’s proof for Jesus’ support of military violence can only make sense to someone with an hallucinatory sense of New Testament history that abstracts Jesus from his context of socio-political-religious unrest in a Palestine under Roman imperial rule. If Pat knew anything about Jesus’ historical moment, he’d understand that until A.D. 312, when Constantine proclaimed Christianity to be the religion of the Roman empire, Christians were persecuted in part because they were pacifists who would not serve in the military or condone violence. Pat, to your mind, does Jesus’ putative support for this centurion mean that he also condoned the actions of a Roman military who were the occupiers of the Jews? Who enforced a ban on Christianity? Who frequently murdered, tortured, and some might say martyred the early Christians in the most cruel and barbarous of ways? And besides, didn’t these believers, inspired by Jesus’ death, passively receive their fates at the hands of gladiators, in the mouths of lions, and on crosses?

These questions are significant because in Robertson’s second quotation of scripture, the apostle Paul appears completely indifferent as to who is wielding the “sword” of violence; he only indicates that “He who wields the sword wields it not in vain, for he is a minister of God to bring justice or judgment against the ungodly.” Does this mean that anyone who has a big sword and swings it about wildly is at that moment the instrument or “minister of God” dispensing his “justice”? Viewed though Paul’s statement, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9-11 must have been God bringing his “judgment” against ungodly U.S. citizens. As difficult as this is to accept, it is very consistent with other things Robertson has uttered. For instance, in 1998 Pat denounced Orlando Florida’s annual “Gay Day” celebration in a statement worthy of Cotton Mather:

“I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you.” Robertson also said the widespread practice of homosexuality “will bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.” Robertson said his warning “is not a message of hate. This is a message of redemption.”

And let’s not forget this exchange between Robertson and Jerry Falwell concerning the 9-11 attacks:

Falwell: “What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

Robertson: “Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven’t begun to see what they can do to the major population.”

Falwell: “The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I’ll hear from them for this, but throwing God…successfully with the help of the federal court system…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”

Robertson: “I totally concur, and the problem is we’ve adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.”

So, according to Pat Robertson’s typological understanding of history, when terrorists bomb us, or when meteors or earthquakes or tornadoes strike, this is God’s hidden method of “judgment” and “redemption.”

But now I’m confused: when the 9-11 hijackers attacked the World Trade Center, God was dispensing his “judgment” on the U.S. for its sin; yet, when we strike Afghanistan and Iraq in response to 9-11, we are also the messengers of God’s vengeance helping him “to restrain evil”?

Whew! Pat, I must admit, it gets tough to decide who are the righteous and evil ones in this tangled mess . . . perhaps it would be better if we left the vengeance to God and everyone else just turned the other cheek, like Jesus said!

*[UPDATE]: Check out Jerry Falwell’s 911-era article titled “God is Pro-War“