I WAS listening to someone speak the other day and in passing he said that Americans didn’t believe in God.
I was appalled because it is patently not true. Judging by the recent presidential election results, Americans definitely believe in God. The only problem is they don’t think it’s the same God as the one the rest of us believe in.
The God that they believe in is the one that endorsed George W. Bush. Since Bush is divinely elected (through the 51% of Americans who voted for him), then everything he does must be divinely ordained. That includes the invasion of Iraq.
But that makes God an incredibly vengeful one because if the invasion of Iraq is to avenge the deaths of Sept 11, the principle of an eye for an eye has long ago been exceeded with the deaths of thousands of Iraqis (and Afghans for that matter).
In fact, there’s even been an additional thousand American deaths in Iraq. You have to wonder, when the American deaths in Iraq exceed the 3,000 or so from Sept 11, what do you call that war?
This God that slightly more than half of Americans worship seems to be rather flawed too. For one thing, it is a God that doesn’t like the environment. Despite being one of the biggest polluters on Earth, the United States declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol even though most countries of the world have signed it. How do you protect the environment if one of the worst offenders refuses to cooperate?
Not only do they not care about other people’s environment, they don’t care about their own either. One of the expected policies of this new Bush government is to open up their formerly protected wilderness areas to oil drilling. That’s respecting God’s gift for you.
Nor does this American God care much for women. Despite condescending comments about the admittedly poor state of gender equality in much of the developing world, it’s not as if American women fare much better.
They earn only about 80% of what American men do, and are only barely holding on to their right to control their own bodies.
Even then this new Government is likely to appoint new judges that would challenge that. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). That basically means they don’t mind discriminating against women.
Not content with oppressing their own women, they have also been actively trying to oppress women around the world, most notably by cutting off funding to international NGOs that provide health services to women on the excuse that these NGOs provide information about abortion.
As a result, thousands of poor women in developing countries have become ill and even died because they have nowhere to go to get even basic health services. Apparently their God sanctions this.
The type of American who thinks that God asked them to vote for Bush also has no time for the rest of the world.
So, never mind the United Nations and all the dialogues and treaties that a civilised world needs to live harmoniously together.
Since God is apparently behind them, they can go out and do what they want, never mind what anyone else thinks. Just ask Dick Cheney, even if he doesn’t use the God language as much as Bush. Whatever works I guess.
The weirdest thing about this American belief in divine support for everything they do is that it sounds exactly like some other people we know nearer home.
The total belief that God’s behind whatever they do, that therefore they and only they are right, no matter how much misery it inflicts on others. The even weirder thing is, despite these similarities, they think the other’s the Devil’s spawn.
Meanwhile those of us who don’t believe that God could possibly be that cruel and unjust are caught in between.
We’d like to live in peace and see everyone have a fair shake at everything but we don’t get much of a chance. We try to be so nice to everyone including those who hate us, and we try to uphold everyone’s right to have their own beliefs.
The trouble is, those people don’t believe that we have a right to believe in anything different from them. So as a result, they think we’re heretics. Which makes life pretty irritating.
Basically this supposedly God-endorsed President will simply make war on the other side that thinks God endorses them too. And since both sides think their God is different from the other, it’s not exactly a formula for peace.
Wasn’t that the whole reason that monotheistic religions came into being in the first place, so that human beings wouldn’t have to fight over who’s got the better boss?
The Star Online, November 17, 2004
