A column by Tim Wise in the LA Weekly, forwarded to me by Bob Sarles:
A God With Whom I Am Not Familiar
This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, in the Brooks Brothers shirt:
You don’t know me. But I know you.
I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.
You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal — and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word — moralistically scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck.
further…
Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mothers’ arms, and letting old people die in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street? But no, it isn’t God who’s the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is).
God doesn’t feed you, and it isn’t God that kept me from turning around and beating your lily-white privileged ass today either. God has nothing to do with it. God doesn’t care who wins the Super Bowl. God doesn’t help anyone win an Academy Award. God didn’t get you your last raise, or your SUV. And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
and…
Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five, days? Without a margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them, I mean?
Oh, and please, I know. I’m stereotyping you. Imagine that. I’ve assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel, Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry. But, hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren’t deadly. They won’t affect your life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree.
…and…
Well, Chuck, it’s a free country, and so you certainly have the right, I suppose, to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a time like this ‘ or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund ‘ so be it. But let’s leave God out of it, shall we? All of it.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.
Well said. WELL said. If I weren’t a pacifist, I would be wishing that you had beaten that guy’s ass. Thank goodness you didn’t, of course, and it is your inherent decency — not some deity — that deserves the credit.
(Yeah, I know; it’s directed at Tim Wise.)
I got a sinking feeling watching coverage of the Gulf Coast early on. Why did so many people wait in squalor for the government to come save them? I would have been out of there.
Allowing people to have different opinions than yours without getting semi-hysterical can also be added to the roster of things you are unfamiliar with. New Orleans was run into the ground well before this last catastrophe by Democrats and their class war, identity politics. Do something to help those people down there instead of just firing off the typical jive that sounds like it comes from a adjucnt Berkeley professor.
Jonas Berry
It was God’s Big Easy vacation
In a honky tonk on Bourbon Street
Drank a few too many hurricanes
In a snake dance with a voodoo queen.