The Debbil made me do it!

Now we know! People are gay because of a "demonic possession". Pat Robertson says so. That is how we know. Pat also occasionally explains that if we prayed we could steer tornados and hurricanes over onto someone else's property. The problem is, it is difficult to know whether the hurricane hit New Orleans because good Christian people prayed it that way, or because nobody bothered and it sort of wandered into town on its own.

There is something comforting in believing in the power of prayer. It would be terrible to think that we live in a universe in which nature was perverse, sending death and destruction and spring flowers here and there without a plan. That would be a scary place. It is much more heartwarming to believe that tornadoes came through our town because a good Christian, like Pat Robertson, prayed that it would skip his town and head our way. At least then we would know who to blame.

I will admit that I am a bit more troubled by the notion that demonic possession makes people gay: "The Debbil made me do it!" If that is so, any one of us is likely to be flipped from straight to gay, almost anywhere, anytime. And as we learned from the New Testament story in Matthew 8, if Jesus casts our gay debbils into a herd of pigs, and we get to praying to Sweet Jesus to cast out our debbils, then we are going to have a lot of very gay pigs. And I have not had time to think that through.

We should be grateful that we have people like Pat Robertson helping us think our way through these things.

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