Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, who heads up the Pray in Jesus Name (PIJN) Project, is known for incendiary rhetoric, which he defends on biblical grounds. He suggested divine retribution might explain an infamous crime in Longmont earlier this year in which a pregnant woman’s fetus was cut from her womb (the mother-to-be survived; the fetus did not). Klingenschmitt compared this to a Bible passage about pregnant women of Samaria being ripped open because, he said, “they have rebelled against God.” He wondered if the Longmont crime was an example of God cursing America for what he (Klingenschmitt) terms our own rebellion in not protecting the unborn.

Klingenshmitt is also a Colorado state legislator, and he was widely criticized for insensitivity. He eventually apologized, admitting his words “were not compassionate.” He did not back away from the premise that God visits violence on the innocent to express his wrath over the transgressions of others.

More recently Klingenshmitt sermonized on his PIJN website that when a crane collapsed in September at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 100+ people, this may have been a penalty for Muslims worshipping a false god.

His observations exemplify a preoccupation with divine retribution and violent punishment for sin that is often seen among biblical literalists. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Christian conservatives Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said they saw the tragedy as a sign of God “giving us probably what we deserve” for failing to sufficiently revere him. “God will not be mocked,” Falwell said. “We make God mad.” On another occasion Robertson cautioned gay pride marchers in Orlando, Florida, that God might punish their region with hurricanes. Religious spokespersons uttered similar thoughts about Hurricane Katrina being punishment for the licentious culture of New Orleans.

The implication once again is that it is the nature of divine retribution to be indiscriminate and horrific, to include the innocent in its sweeping infliction of pain and misery.

It’s true the Bible writers did envision a God who ordered senseless slaughter, often just for holding wrong beliefs. One who commanded the near extinction of the human race, save those who could make it onto Noah’s ark, because he was disappointed in how his created world was acting. Instead of rehabilitating humans, this supposedly all-powerful God opted to annihilate just about every one of them.

Why does belief in such a pitiless and petulant God so often go unquestioned? What sort of deity would wreak the kind of horror on innocents as what occurred in Longmont, at the Twin Towers, along the Gulf, and in Mecca? Why do some religionists adhere to one so intimidating and merciless? Is this where the term God-fearing arises from? If so, why is it considered a plus to live under such dark threat?

Lifelong fear of whatever anger and agony God might unleash next is hardly a reasonable basis for belief in him, and not a worthy incentive for our own behavior. We are capable of nobler, more rational, and more positive motivations. We can all lead ethical lives and aspire to the greater good of our world and those with whom we share it. Simply because it’s the humanly right thing to do. We can do this without a god and, therefore, without living ever in fear of one.

By Ken Burrows

Published October 28, 2015 with quotation below:

“Fear was the first thing on Earth to make gods.”
                                  ---- Lucretius