A Christian radio host who enthusiastically looks for signs the world will end welcomed the Ebola virus as a cleansing force…. “This Ebola epidemic could become a global pandemic and that’s another name for plague,” said broadcaster Rick Wiles on his “Trunews” program…. “It may be the great attitude adjustment that I believe is coming,” Wiles continued. “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion.”
I never cease to be fascinated by Red Meat Conservative Christians who default to the belief that any sort of natural disaster is God’s judgment on [insert name of reviled class of people here] for [insert name of despised belief(s)/act(s) here]. As if they and ONLY they were on the same wavelength with God, perfectly attuned to His likes and dislikes. Yeah, it’s as arrogant as it is self-serving, but that’s what I find so endlessly entertaining about Fundies like Wiles. By all indications, he actually believes the crap he’s shoveling over the airwaves. And the fact that he has a radio show would seem to indicate he has an audience of like-minded knuckle-draggers who believe Earth was created 6000 years ago when Jesus arrived on the scene riding a dinosaur.
Don’t get me wrong; I try hard to respect the religious beliefs of others…as long as they return that respect. Wiles and his fellow moral midgets respect nothing and no one, and anything but complete obeisance to his twisted take on Christianity is considered blasphemy. Perhaps if Wiles managed to pull himself out of his Old Testament mentality, he’d realize the absurdity of espousing a doctrine in which (among other things) eating bacon-wrapped shrimp is a mortal sin. I mean, if you’re going to hold the Old Testament to be the rulebook, you don’t get to pick and choose which parts of it you can use to condemn other, lesser mortals with.
Wiles is unworthy of respect if for no other reason than his “Kill ‘em and grill ‘em” theology has little if anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s about power, social control, fear, and good old-fashioned (un)Christian hatred. I can only hope that Wiles (and those who think like him) has a reserved parking space waiting for him in his version of Hell…and that the Devil will greet him with kneepads, a tube of AstroGlide, and a smile.
If we’re lucky, perhaps Ebola will cleanse this country of American Taliban nutjobs like Wiles, who wouldn’t recognize peace, love, and understanding if it was delivered by Jesus his own self. And perhaps then those who try to live their Christian beliefs based on the Gospel will come to seen as the real True Believers.
