Against the "Prosperity Gospel"

I'll be honest, I've usually only been hypnotized by Joel Osteen's smile long enough to catch a couple points in his sermons. Then something snaps me out of it and I continue channel surfing for American Pickers reruns, UFC highlights, or the Weather Channel. But occasionally I've tuned in long enough to actually digest some of his teachings. They sound great on the surface. They're uplifting. They're inspiring. They're motivating. They promise good things.

Ay, but there's the rub. To paraphrase one comment I heard on his program: "pray and dedicate your life to God and expect good things to happen to you." Now I'm all for praying and I'm all for dedicating my life to God, but I'm not all for expecting results. This can all be easily summed up in one hypothetical situation.

Let's say there's someone suffering. Horrible suffering. Some problem that we just can't imagine. They pray to God. They dedicate their life to God. They live their faith. And then their situation changes. The problem is, it changes for the worse. Viewed from the perspective of Prosperity Gospel, what is this person to think? Either they didn't pray well enough, dedicate themselves enough, or do enough for God to intervene positively in their life. They weren't a good enough Christian.

This conclusion simply doesn't make sense to me. Sometimes horrible crap happens to good Christians. And then after they pray about it and redouble their faith, worse crap happens. There's no rhyme or reason. The Prosperity Gospel has been disproven definitively. Leave it and don't turn back.

What IS true of God when bad things happen and then even worse crap happens on top of it is that God is there with us -- suffering WITH us. That's the most important message.

On Benghazi, Truth, and Accountability

There are noisy calls for action on Benghazi coming from some groups. The knee-jerk reaction to this from opposing groups is to point out the Bush era parallels. I admit, this was my own first though, but before hitting "post" I thought better of it. Countering the Benghazi truth demanders with "et tu quoque" does nothing to advance either one's argument or the truth. Instead, each group has a responsibility to ignore fallacies and actually examine what lies beyond.

Those calling for the truth about Benghazi and for those reponsible for any sort of coverup (or for denying the calls for protection) to be held accountable must realize that throughout almost 8 years of the Bush presidency, truth and accountability were woefully lacking. Thankfully, with almost 12 years of hindsight, we can realize that the hue and cry about (1) WMD and (2) Iraqi support of Al Qaeda were at best bad intelligence and at worst purposefully doctored intelligence that served the purpose of convincing the American people to go to war in Iraq. Add torture and the ignoring (a nice term that could be construed as "breaking") of international law to the mix, and you've got probable cause for charging many in the military and Bush's cabinet/advisors with crimes against humanity. For those calling for truth in Bengazi, they simply cannot ignore this.

For the defenders of the Obama administration's response to Benghazi, however, they cannot simply reply with "well look at Bush!" There is ample evidence of at least a coverup of the "talking points" to downplay the role of terrorism in Benghazi. This should not be swept under the rug by deflecting back to the Bush years. Anyone truly interested in the truth and holding people accountable must agree that both instances and both administrations should be placed under the lens.

While Benghazi and Iraq may be qualitatively comparable, they are certainly not quantitatively comparable. To echo Reinhold Niebuhr, all are sinful, but some are more responsible for the effects of their sin than others. Four people killed and ten injured in Bengazi (while undeniably tragic for the families and friends), pales in comparison to the tens of thousands killed and even more injured in the invasion of Iraq. So yes, let's demand the truth from our government and force the responsible to answer either to the public or to the courts.

On Syria and Chemical Weapons

The President made the statement that Syria's use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer. Let's revisit the Just War tradition to see if we can find out why that is so.

Chemical and biological weapons are considered anathema in the JW tradition not because they are sui generis or because of their destructive power. They are condemned because of their indiscriminate nature. You can't aim a chemical weapon. You have no way to insure a biological weapon targets only the military. In the JW tradition, the principle that is invoked in this is non-combatant immunity.

Non-combatant immunity, in my option, is the single most important facet of the Just War tradition. Civilians should be off limits in overt conflict. THIS is the heart of the issue in Syria.

Instead of invoking chemical weapons as a game changer, the President should have invoked the violation of non-combatant immunity as a game changer. This is, after all, why chemical weapons are so horrible.

The Assad regime violated non-combatant immunity a long time ago. The President should have already acted.