At the White House Prayer Breakfast this morning, an affront to the separation of Church and State that has been held annually since 1953, President Obama declared that God does not condone terror. Well, to be honest, he/she has not taken a firm stand.
While the Bible and other ancient Scriptures recount God's direct intervention on behalf of the faithful, he/she has apparently decided not to get involved in more recent Centuries. No divine intervention was documented during the Holocaust or during the reign of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Neither has God destroyed the gulags of Russia or the prison camps of North Korea. One is left to doubt that he/she will join the coalition fighting ISIS or other terror groups, even when they commit atrocities in his/her name.
Those who believe that an all-powerful God watches over this planet, demanding our faith while permitting atrocities to occur (often involving innocent children) must accept the fact that he/she condones terror (at least here on Earth). Many of us cannot believe in such a sadistic deity; rather, we suspect that humans, facing the brutality of our own species, have imagined a God who, in the end, will even the score. Unfortunately, those disparate beliefs have only fanned the flames of hatred and intolerance.
