A few weeks ago, “The View” co-star Joy Behar mocked Vice President Mike Pence’s Christian beliefs, and in particular the idea that God speaks to him:
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus, it’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. … That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct.”
Around the same time, Oprah Winfrey, who many are calling upon to run for the Presidency, offered up a statement that echoes the particulars of Pence’s belief that Behar mocked.
“God, if you think I’m supposed to run, you gotta tell me, and it has to be so clear that not even I can miss it.”
Not only did Behar not mock Oprah for asserting (at least the expectation of) a two-way conversation with (the Christian) God, she recently apologized, privately and directly, to the vice president for her comments.
Forgive my cynicism and skepticism as to the sincerity of Behar’s apology. Most celebrity apologies reek of “I gotta save my career” pragmatism and/or “I was told by the powers that be to apologize” suggestion.
In this case, I suspect that Democratic Party apparatchiks saw a potentially large problem should Oprah decide to run, and decided to get ahead of it by whispering into the proper ears that Behar needed to make this go away.
Fact is, some of the Left’s core constituencies tend to be strongly religious. The black community, which votes 90% Democratic most of the time, is one. The Latino community, which the Left has been courting furiously, is another. Yes, the Dems purport to offer all sorts of other positives for those communities, and the GOP has done little to help itself, especially with Latinos, but the Left’s relentless hostility to Christianity (even as it trips all over itself in perpetual Islam-apologia) should give strategists ample reason to worry.
Ideally, the Left would not be so reflexively condescending to those with strong Christian beliefs, even if they don’t share those beliefs. After all – there are many devout Christians who have traditionally leaned liberal on other matters (working class union types come to mind), and there’s nothing to be gained by alienating them. After all – what’s the point of attitudes like Behar’s? It is quite possible to embrace religious liberty without going down the path of theocracy. Yes, there are other constituencies (LGBT, for example) that are in conflict with traditional Christian beliefs, but both major parties are awash in dissonances, disconnects, and conflicts. And, interestingly, even as many on the Left deride Christian beliefs, I see countless iterations of memes that try to assert that Jesus was a socialist, suggesting they want to get Christians to be part of their party, even as they deride their beliefs.
I’m tempted to believe that the attitude Behar and others like her exhibit is rooted in the reflexive contrarianism that seems to be how too many people decide their politics nowadays. If someone who you deem to be on the “other side,” believes X, you start out by believing not-X, and have to be convinced otherwise. While I’m also tempted to think they’ve “gotten away” with this antipathy, given that many Christians vote Democratic, the Democratic Party’s 1000+ losses in 2010-2016 suggest otherwise.
Really – there’s no reason for the Left to be so nastily derisive towards others’ beliefs, even if they don’t concur with those beliefs. But, nasty derision seems to be the default response to anything that is “other” nowadays. That bodes ill for our culture’s future.
Loading ...
To have God talk back is rare. I use “God” as a label rather than a name. Anyway, it has happened to me. I won’t here list all the details but the short version is that I heard a voice, it was my own actually, but I didn’t speak; and I didn’t actually “hear” it, but it was that moment of perception where sound turns into words, and thus I “heard” it between my ears, and in my own voice and language, telling me to go to a person that needed my help. So, I did, and his daughter had just been in an automobile accident.
I have no way of knowing whether this phenomenon came from “God” by whatever anyone means by that word; but the fact of it is real enough, and the accident will be a matter of record. Another one was when I was driving on Kamehameha highway at Pearl Harbor and that same inner voice said, “Change lanes now.” So, I did, and a couple of seconds later proceeding in the wrong direction in the lane I had just vacated was a drunken driver at high speed. This was before cellphones but I’m an amateur radio operator so called it in to the police and they caught up with him a few miles westward. The fact of the call is on record; why it is that I was alive to make that call is not a matter of record.
I have about a dozen such things in varying degrees of removal from coincidence.
These forces exist on a matrix where one dimension, let us say X, is the “goodness” axis, and Y is the intelligence axis. There’s likely others. God is simply whatever occupies most good and most intelligent; his enemy is least good but still intelligent. Then there’s all kinds of lesser things sometimes malevolent but not particularly intelligent or purposeful; they just exist.