A Little Fun with Biblical Theology

Ah Sunday morning! And here's the NYTs featuring a literary artist, Marilynne Robinson, who invokes a deity while supporting a political candidate who is openly committing genocide. (Article is linked to pic.)

Observation 1: which god is invoked here? (So many to choose from.)

NYTs assumes readers already buy this brand.

Observation 2: assuming it is the biblical deity that is invoked, the putatively-liberal Robinson worships a deity that chooses political candidates. Hmm, now where have we heard that before? Oh yeah—that's right(wing)! "Bush said to James Robinson: 'I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.'" Well, I guess it's all part of that one nation under (which?) god stuff, like this. Observation 3: ok, let's go with the flow here and get really spiritual; if god chose Biden, then we assume it didn't choose Trump. Then what did choose Trump? It must have been the devil, right? This is good vs. evil allegorical narratology, after all, biblical theology at its best.

So, this Biden-choosing-deity allows the devil to choose Trump, an allowance that means that it has also chosen Trump.

Because if it didn't let the devil choose Trump, then god's-gift-Biden would not be worrying about Trump at all.

Observation 4: above, we have assumed that god governs the devil; god must have more power than the devil does, or else the devil would be/is god. Right?

So, what if god's candidate doesn't win the election? Does that mean that the devil is god? and all the stuff the USA does, and has done, is .... oh my!

Observation 5: the magical thinking, and by extension putatively-liberal US culture, presented here by the NYTs is very primitive. Its cultural exemplars conflate religion and politics, theology and ideology— oh wait! "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

And that's that for this Sunday mourning.

UPDATE:

Robinson assumes she knows what her deity is thinking (it's giving us the gift of Biden), and shares them (the thoughts it is thinking) with us; she speaks for it.

Children do the same things with dolls.

Just like this Alabama judge: it's called projection:

"When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children under state law, its chief justice had a higher authority in mind.

By citing verses from the Bible and Christian theologians in his concurring opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker alarmed advocates for church-state separation, while delighting religious conservatives who oppose abortion.

Human life, Parker wrote, “cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”"

> Projecting their own self/image into the void, Bibliots make their deities. A deity is conjured, but it's Parker's wrath that is being expressed. God functions, for Robinson and Parker, as an excuse for behavior. It's not them that is the agent or source of their thoughts and acts; it's nobodaddy. UPDATE 2 Steve Bannon, the fascist ideologue, invoked Robinson's nobodaddy on behalf of Trump recently: "They hate [Trump] because they understand your commitment to him and part of your commitment is you understand, wait for it MSNBC, wait for it, wait for it, no, don't, wait for it, he is an instrument of divine providence. Yep. He is. Of that there's no doubt. There's empirical evidence of that. This is one of the reasons people support him because they understand he’s doing God’s will to save this republic when all rationality said no, let me not do that, they win" Nobodaddy is on every side! Hail!

UPDATE 3 We're fucked—bc religion is a primordial form of politics. When secular governments fail, mass populations revert to religion. Liberalism did not survive bc neoliberalism concentrated wealth and the Citizens United plutocrats generated by it used it to cover their authoritarianism, and the neocons used it to cover their totalitarian global-genocides. This "freedom spreader" is a bloody war criminal still at-large: