Cecil the Lion died so everyone could tell you what you really should be upset about.
— William K. Wolfrum (@Wolfrum) August 7, 2015
In a sermon to his father John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church on Sunday, Matthew Hagee took on the recent set of videos falsely claiming that Planned Parenthood sells “baby parts” for profit and the controversy over the killing of a well-known lion in Zimbabwe, saying that the teaching of evolution in schools is to blame for both legal abortion and the uproar over Cecil the lion’s death. “God help a country that is more concerned about a lion in Zimbabwe than we are about 55 million children that we’ve murdered in a senseless, senseless fashion,” Hagee declared…. “How did we do it?” he asked. “I’ll tell you how. We taught ourselves to do this. We went to classrooms where they didn’t tell us that we were made by God our Creator. They told us that we were the highest form of a scientific process called evolution. ‘There’s just one little chromosome between us and Cecil the lion.’ Thank God for that chromosome, because it gave me a finger and I can use it to pull the trigger!”
I love John Hagee. No, not because of his pedantic, Byzantine, kill-‘em-and-grill-‘em Christianity. Or because he knows as much about Christian love, acceptance, and tolerance as Josef Stalin. No, I love John Hagee because he’s so transparently, unintentionally, and humorously evil. Now it appears that in his son, Matthew, the rotten, maggoty apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
I’ve on many previous occasion expounded at considerable length about how Hagee is as much a Christian as I am the Queen of Sweden. I’m as tired of his world-class hypocrisy and delusional hyper-religiosity, but debunking that- again- isn’t my purpose here, except as background. I do find it interesting- and quite sad- that Matthew Hagee is willing to flog a deceptively edited video as unvarnished truth merely because it fits his narrow agenda. Worse, tying Planned Parenthood’s selling of “baby parts” that they in fact DON’t sell to killing Cecil the lion, teaching evolution in schools, AND abortion is a world-class logical stretch. “How did we do it?” he asked…well, actually we didn’t, but since Hagee seems to care not at all for the truth of the matter, why not wrap it in a ball and run with it?
The (im)morality of hunting aside (that’s another argument best left for another time), the worldwide outcry over the killing of Cecil the lion can be laid to one reason: he had a name. This sort of thing happens all over the world hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times each and every day. Now it’s become (perhaps justifiably) a cause celebre…and people like Hagee the Younger are using it to flog their personal agenda. That the death of a lion is connected not at all to abortion, teaching evolution, or the Green Bay Packers matters not to those who, like Hagee, care only for stoking the righteous rage of the faithful…in order that they’ll donate a whole lot of cash to continue the fight against the Forces of Evil. Or buy themselves a Gulfstream.
The Hagee family are all about the teachings of Jesus Christ…in the same way the Jacobins were about peaceful, nonviolent revolution. Where Christ taught love, tolerance, acceptance, and compassion, the Hagees teach hatred, intolerance, rejection, and self-righteousness. Their intolerant, exclusionary, angry, self-righteous theology is as much about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Dennis Miller is about humor.
Turns out that running an empire fueled by hatred and hypocrisy is quite the lucrative endeavor. Some folks LOVE a theology based on rage and hatred, because it gives them a way to elevate themselves above those they consider “less than.” It allows them to justify completely ignoring the actual teachings of their Lord and Savior in order to believe themselves to be the Chosen Ones. That there’s no theological basis- zero, zip, none, nada- to justify holding themselves over others means nothing to those convinced that their belief system- and ONLY their belief system- is the One, True, and ONLY Faith ©.
That Matthew Hagee- like his father- would go to such lengths to preach hatred, exclusion, and intolerance and pass it off as the teachings of Jesus Christ only serves to demonstrate how thoroughly corrupt modern Christianity has become. If anyone were to ask me why I consider myself to be good without God, I’d point at the Hagees- father and son- neither of whom would recognize the teachings of their Lord and Savior if their life depended on it. They’re not Christians as much as accomplished and unrepentant sociopaths. That many believers continue to throw money at them tells me everything I need to know that I made the right choice.
