Pat Robertson's God is gonna get you!

I know it's uncharitable, but when Pat Robertson says, ""I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover [Pennsylvania]: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," I think he qualifies for the Biggest Jerk of the Year Award. Dover's big sin: dumping eight of nine school board members who forced teachers to read statements about "intelligent design" before teaching biology class.

Just what kind of God does this guy believe in? Probably the kind that destroyed New Orleans with two hurricanes because of the debauchery in the French Quarter. Or maybe the one that wiped out 200,000 South Asians in last year's tsunami. That God just finished killing 80,000 people with an earthquake in Pakistan, too. The coup-de-grace has to be the AIDS pandemic, punishing all those sexual miscreants and their orphaned children. That was a stroke of genius.

Hmm, what human being most closely resembles Pat Robertson's God? I guess you'd have to ask which human beings are most famous for collective retribution; they also happen to be the biggest murderers in human history. Must I name names?

And has anyone noticed that Pat Robertson's God really has it out for poor people? Katrina's victims were mostly inner-city poor. Those drowned in the tsunami, too. And Pakistan's 80,000. So where did Pat find his God?

I'm sure the "God of the Old Testament" is going to unjustly take the blame here--"Sodom and Gomorrah, Sodom and Gomorrah," goes the constant refrain. But what about the God of the prophets, slow to anger, abounding in kindness--you know, the God who REALLY gets mad when the rich screw the poor? And supposedly Pat is Christian, so what about Jesus? "Blessed are the poor." Can't get any clearer than that.

The better question, of course, is why so many still believe in Pat's God. Sure, we want to know why bad, even really bad, things happen, but do we want a clean answer so much that we're willing to tolerate a heavenly monster?

That is, after all, what Pat's God is. A big omnipotent, moralistic bully. Take out the omnipotent part and God looks a lot like Pat Robertson.