Pat Robertson and why we don’t need reactive prophets
I’m reading through the Bible in 90 days right now. I finished the Pentateuch yesterday. One interesting verse I ran into a few days ago says, “If the prophet predicts something in the Lord’s name and it does not happen, the Lord did not give the message. That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared.” (Deuteronomy 18:22 – NLT)
So in scripture when things were destroyed, like say the world or Judah or even evil, cannibalistic, homoerotic places like Nineveh or Sodom (My Sunday School teacher had a terrific imagination), typically those things were foretold by a prophet of God or even an angel of God who came beforehand and warned people that they have time to repent before God acts. Now before you get all bent out of shape that I’m making light of the OT, please know that I believe that these things did happen and that God, though He is love, is also a God of justice. And I believe there are plenty of times in Scripture when God reacts immediately to people’s individual sin.
But I can’t find a time anywhere in Scripture when a tragedy of epic proportions happened to a group of people, and a prophet of God reacted with “I told you so.” “You know, I’ve been preaching for years and years about God and who He is, and now this tragedy happened, and I’ll tell you why it is, because of the way you acted. I told you so Sodom! I told you so Judah! Now God got ya!”
No, welcome to the modern world of reactive prophecy. We don’t actually have to prove that we are speaking for God, we can just talk about stuff after the fact. Oklahoma Bombings. September 11th. Madrid bombings. Tsunamis. Hurricanes. It’s easy for us to speak of why God did it after the fact, isn’t it? Parents, this makes for an amazing child rearing technique. You share with little Johnny that he shouldn’t touch the hot stove, and then when he ignores you, bring it up again. Amidst the pain and bruising on his hand, at the moment when he’s writhing in pain, feel free to bring a “You should have listened to me. If you had listened to me, your hand wouldn’t be red and your skin would still be on your hand, and you wouldn’t feel the pain that you do now.”
The truth is, if God wanted you to speak to Haiti, Mr. Robertson, I respectfully ask you to consider the fact that he would have asked you to do it a month or two ago. Yesterday was too late. The pain was there. The lives were lost. The homes were destroyed. And now we pray that we all learn something about life and love and God.
But we don’t say or even infer, “I told you so.”
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Love your perspective Marty. Nicely done.
Marty,
Great take. I agree. Hindsight has 20/20 vision? I definitely don’t serve a “gotcha” or “I told you so God”.
Robertson’s timing shows his lack of understanding of human need, lack of civility, and poor timing. We can debate the accuracy of his comments at a latter time.
Robertson is also pretty irrelevant. I think he said some of these things to get a blip on his relevant radar.
Bottom line for me is that no one knows why or why not God in his goodness allows things to happen. For now, we should pray, aid, and comfort those in terrible need.
Excellent post Marty! God is a God of second Chances not I told you so’s.
I’m trying so hard not to get boiled over with anger at Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh for their absurdly ignorant and fanatical comments. It does no good to put any energy into that when so much more is needed to actually HELP people in Haiti. I’m trying……
Thank you God for the grace and strength. *sigh. Ok, now lets get to work!
Great post! I really like the symbolism of the parent. It can also show how God does not cause these things to happen. As with the parent & child, even though the parent instructed the child not to touch the stove ahead of time, they did not make the child touch the stove.
Just like through the Bible and God speaking to us, we learn how we should live and get instruction. now if we don’t heed his instruction and something bad happens it is not God that caused it to happen. We have free will to make decisions for ourselves.
He will work through these things to help us achieve the best outcome, but we still have to struggle through it.
Did anybody go back and see if Pat Robertson HAD said something before this happened or are we just assuming he didn’t?
Yeah, never mind, he didn’t
Good words, Marty.
The other Old Testament story this brings to mind is the story of Joshua and the angel. Joshua says to the angel, “Are you on my side?” and the angel rebukes Joshua for his arrogance, thinking that God would pick human sides…
It seems like Robertson begins with this (largely political) world view and then uses everything that happens as a way to demonstrate how God has taken up his side.
Great post Marty!! I always love your perspective and insight!! Whenever anything happens martyholman.com is the first place I go to learn how I should think and feel.
sorry i’m late to the “comment table”.
i like this. i like that you’ve brought proper attention to Pat’s comments. Too often when a Christian makes a decidedly unbiblical assertion with great certitude it spurs the world to dig in its heels against the god that isn’t.
The God that IS ought to be better represented by us in word and deed. We fail enough without having “spokesmen” wiping out faithful witness in a few ill-conceived words.
MB: i don’t know if you’ll turn back here this late but, how did you manage to link Pat and Rush in the same sentence? Did Rush say the same thing?