“Well, they took God out of our schools and look around, look at what's happening...”
(See articles like http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0098_Ban_on_school_prayer.html for more instances of this rhetoric.)
It's time to call this kind of language what it is: harmful. And it illustrates why theology matters.Why is this kind of language harmful? It's not helpful, and even harmful, because it makes short-viewed assumptions ... and also makes God into an angry puppeteer whose actions are based on how good or bad all of us flawed humans behave.
My example: The recent mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. You will hear no one make a similar absurd statement about the removal of God as the cause of this horrific incident. And yet, the violence and chaos of our world continues ... even in a house of Christian worship.
This is precisely why theology matters.
Theology (the study of the nature of God / how we speak about God) does matter. It matters because people are easily influenced, and statements such as the example above portray God in a misguided, harmful way. Statements such as "This is what happens when you take God out of [fill in the blank]" lead people to see God as that angry puppeteer. And, as the shooting at First Baptist Church show, these arguments don't hold up to reasoned logic.
Is God really the kind of Deity that allows shootings in schools and other places, all because prayer has become more regulated in public spaces? That's not the God I know. And I'm guessing it's not the God you know, either. May we all learn to speak of God with care and compassion, even as we question the darkness so prevalent in our world.
