Godly Politics

From the look of things it seems God is a little partial to dumb Texas governors who like to wear their religion on their sleeves. Rick Perry (you know, the guy who wants to be president of the country from which he wants to secede) recently held a prayer event in a football stadium (Matthew 6:6) to ask for God's help in dealing with the problems our nation faces. Guess what? To my complete and utter surprise, according to Rick Perry, God wholeheartedly endorses Rick Perry's political ideas. Might as well spill out the goat entrails and see what Ba'al has in mind for 2012.

When you mix your politics with your religion, you wind up with a toxic stew that is poison to both; your religion inevitably gets corrupted by the lying and deceitfulness inherent in the politics and your politics must be perfect and unquestionable because it comes from God. Could the right wing political co-opting of religion be a contributing factor to why American church attendance is going down by about one million per year? When exactly did God anoint the GOP as His chosen people? If God chose George Bush as President, as many, many swore He did back in 2000, then surely God must have known that George was going to make an awful mess of the economy, so what conclusions can we draw about God from this choice? Religion and politics don't mix well because when your Godly politics fail, as they inevitably will (because they actually come from partisan humans), it calls into question your religious beliefs; it pulls your religion down into the muck of politics. If God chooses a president or a political ideology, then God owns the outcome. But according to almost all Christian doctrine, the whole point of our existence is to exercise free will, so if God is choosing our presidents, or steering hurricanes or causing earthquakes or in any other way interfering in human affairs, then we don't really have free will; Do we? So maybe God really isn't partial to dumb Texas governors; maybe it is actually people that don't understand the point of their religion that are partial to dumb Texas governors.