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| Richard Mourdock (R-IN) |
Just about the only people in America today who make worse theologians than left-wingish neo-atheists so-called are right-wing tea party politicians making pronouncements on abortion issues. We had the latest example delivered to us this past Tuesday evening (10/23/12) in the comments (
here) of Richard Mourdock, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. Commenting on the question of abortion in cases of rape, Mr. Mourdock stated that, "Life is a gift from God," and even in the case of rape life "is something that God intended to happen." In a comment the next day, Mourdock refused to walk back his remarks, being quoted (
here) as saying,""I spoke from my heart. And speaking from my heart, speaking from the deepest level of my faith, I would not apologize. I would be less than faithful if I said anything other than life is precious, I believe it's a gift from God,"
Now, to be fair, Mr. Mourdock did try to walk back some of this. Even as he doubled down on his belief that human life is a gift from God, he did retract his comments about God causing rape. He is quoted as saying (
here), "“I don’t think God wants rape. I don’t think he wants that at all because rape is evil,” A serious problem for Mr. Mourdock is that he did, in fact, say that God causes rapes in order to give us the gift of life. Given his theology, his original statement is the more logical one. Now, he is stuck with the incredibly difficult problem of explaining how his all-powerful but supposedly loving God created a world in which this god gives us the gift of life through rape. Let's be clear here. He is not arguing that life is precious in its own right and thus abortions are always wrong. He claims that abortions are wrong because life is a gift from God, which in effect makes it a sin always, in every circumstance to abort a fetus. More to the point even, God wills all human life. Therefore, because rape leads to life, it is within the providence and will of God. It is only logical, then, that God causes rapes for the sake of life.
Another problem for Mourdock is that the American public is seldom interested in nuances and explanations that go beyond a sound-bite or two. He said that rapes are the will of God, and now all of his attempts to nuance that statement will do him little or no good. Politicians, especially right-wing ones, should just stay away from theology. It is a field given to nuance.
The fundamental problem Mr. Mourdock, however, is a widely held conception of God as an individual person with person-like characteristics. If we view God as a discrete personality, then God necessarily gets caught up in very human situations and, inevitably, comes out looking human too. In defining God as a person, we have long trivialized God and brought the divine down to our level. (My nuance here is that we can experience God personally, pray to God personally, and establish a deep personal relationship with God—just as many of us experience a particular place personally and love that place personally). We turn God the Beyond into a little, human-like god, which we can then manipulate to fit our theological and political prejudices. We make this little god complicit in our failings. We stick this little god in the middle of our ideological battles, and even if Mr. Mourdock attempts to free this god from creating life through rape, this little god
is complicit in rape. This little god demands an end to most forms of contraception. On the other hand, this little god makes no demands for the protection of the natural environment. It stands aside at the massive injustices of poverty and is happy to fund the world's mightiest military and, evidently, ride its tanks into battle against his jihadist enemies.
One of the greatest challenges we face, theologically speaking, is to discover and develop an understanding of God that recognizes God as both incredibly, vastly Beyond and yet, inexplicably but deeply Present in the Universe, on this planet, and in our lives. When we worship a tiny little human-like god, we turn God into an idol of our own making, a god as small as we are who uses rape to give us the "gift of life."
