WWJA? – WHOM WOULD JESUS ASSASSINATE (8/29/05)

Considering that Pat Robertson’s apology for his malevolent words was significantly less enthusiastic than his call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination, I wonder if I might still find an aftermarket that would attract his hardest-core devotees.

Well-intentioned Christians wear the WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do?”) insignia almost everywhere. Pastor Robertson, with mass media at his disposal, now raises an even more vexing question for his adherents’ wrists and keychains: WWJA? “Whom Would Jesus Assassinate?”

The question at its essence is not comic relief. Does everyone who speaks in the name of God really speak in the name of God? Or, is the name of God a benign rubber stamp to validate maniacal agendas already plotted and set in motion by men bereft of God-consciousness?

Islamists randomly murder innocents without batting an eyelash, because Allah told them to. Hitler announced “Gott bei uns!” (“God is with us!”) as though he and the Almighty had chatted about it over a stein of lager. Rabbi Kahane was certain that God wanted him to cart the Palestinians off to the desert. Without imputing the same motives to them, President Bush and his inner circle have nonetheless been just a tad too loose at framing the mess in Iraq in the rhetoric of a Holy War.

I plead ignorance to the finer points of the Christian Testament. But, this I do know: The answer to “Whom Would Jesus Assassinate?” is “absolutely no one.”
Jesus preached peaceful resolution of conflicts. He abhorred anger, murder and political intrigue. He was forgiving to a fault. Hypocrisy took Jesus to the outer limits of tolerance, but after a few strident words or a parable spoken in love, chastisement could never be confused with vengeance. The Pharisees and Priests – whoever, in fact or fiction, they might have been – used every cruelty to anger him, but he would never capitulate. The only time that he really lost it was with the moneychangers in the Temple courts . . . hmmm . . . Jewish merchants trying to gouge Jewish customers.

Whatever one can say about Christianity, no one in his wildest imagination can conceive of Jesus as a hit-man or shadowy operative. Remember that it took three centuries for Constantine to figure out that if you hold a cross horizontally, it looks a lot like a sword.

Whom Would Jesus Assassinate? Not a soul. That would be an issue between the sinner and God the Father, not Pat, God’s snotty kid. What Would Jesus Do? He probably would be enraged. That business in the Temple courts was a tea party compared to intimating that political assassination comes with his and God’s blessings.

Men who have set themselves up as God’s camera-hungry spokespeople not only raise abstract theological problems. They play with the minds of the most credulous among us, the ones who blindly accept dogma and imprecations, and retain allegiance to preacher and preachments despite their obvious ill-will. Hence, a Robertson or Falwell who speaks with God’s authority is well more to be feared than the mule train of “Christian conservative” talk show hosts.

Did you actually hear, as I did, Pat sentence Chavez to death by an assassin’s bullet? He sat there preening in the intimation of Divine authority that intoxicates media-ordained men of God, but did not once mention God’s name. It reminded me of a sermon about Israel that I delivered early in my career. At the end, a congregant chastised me: “If I wanted a current events update, I would go read the Jerusalem Post. When I come to synagogue, I want to hear what God has to say.”

Did the question “WWJA?” ever cross his conscience before Pat invoked assassination in the name of his Christian ministry? Rabbis and imams may substitute the names of their own saints in the equation. You kind of wonder where it will all end, but I sure hope it isn’t before I dump off 10,000 bracelets in my basement. Hmmm . . . perhaps an ad campaign for Walla Walla Juicy Apples?