My son Ted and his family spent six months in prayer seeking God’s will for this decision. […] It was a Sunday. We were all at his church, First Baptist Church in Houston, including his senior staff. After the church service, we all gathered at the pastor’s office. We were on our knees for two hours seeking God’s will. At the end of that time, a word came through his wife, Heidi. And the word came, just saying, “Seek God’s face, not God’s hand.” And I’ll tell you, it was as if there was a cloud of the holy spirit filling that place. Some of us were weeping, and Ted just looked up and said, “Lord, here am I, use me. I surrender to you, whatever you want.”
From the inception of the American Experiment, this country has been lousy with those claiming that “God’s on my side” and/or “God told me to [insert name of potentially embarrasing behavior or decision here].” The epic, world-class arrogance required to presume God to have singled you out for communication is bad enough; claiming the imprimatur of the Almighty for ANYTHING is evidence of a predilection for demagoguery. Or a serious need for professional psychological help, usually involving prescribing large doses of Thorazine or something similar.
In the same way it’s silly and incredibly self-serving for athletes to thank God for a victory (Have you ever heard an athlete thank Goding after a loss?), the idea that God tells politicians to run for office is patently absurd. Never mind that God without fail seems to instruct Republicans to run for President while somehow ignoring Democrats should be reason enough to invite skepticism. Or perhaps God really IS a Republican? Feel free to discuss this among yourselves after class.
If we listen to our fine American politicians and their hangers-on, during each election God tells a large pile of them to run for president. Most of those candidates go on to humiliate themselves badly, which suggests God perhaps is playing some very mean-spirited tricks on them.
But Cruz’s family is quite convinced God wants Ted Cruz to be president, and wants him to be president for very specific godly reasons. Cruz’s wife Heidi has also declared that a Ted Cruz presidency would exist “to show this country the face of the God we serve.”
From where I sit, Ted Cruz’s flavor of God is reason enough to become (and remain) a confirmed atheist. I don’t dispute his right to believe whatever may provide his existence with meaning and purpose, but what does set off alarm bells is his claim that God- or at least his version of said Supreme Being- is telling him to run for President.
Isn’t it interesting that “God’s instructions” appear to dovetail perfectly with Cruz’s political ambitions and unbridled lust for power? If Cruz needs to provide Divine justification for his plan to dismantle the Constitution in favor of a theocracy based on Biblical principles (that will also mesh with and support his personal prejudices and megalomania), he needs to rethink his reasons for running.
The idea that God actually cares about who becomes President assumes that God favors some of His children over others. It assumes that He has a preferred (conveniently enough, deeply Conservative) ideology, and He wishes more than anything for the dismantling of the separation of Church and State, in order that a theocracy might restore Him to His proper place- anywhere and everywhere, 24/7/365. Amen.
Ted Cruz may believe that God has spoken to him, telling him to utterly humiliate himself by claiming His endorsement imprimatur to run for President, but there are many (myself included) who’d argue that Cruz is the best, most convincing argument for atheism extant today. If Ted Cruz’s flavor of God is calling the shots, then it just confirms my decision to be good without God. I have no desire to be controlled or influenced by the personal deity of a megalomaniac who shouldn’t be allowed to manage a Dairy Queen, much less run for President.
America deserves better than the second coming of Joseph McCarthy- a delusional, self-righteous, hyper-religious huckster with a Messiah complex and the desire to dismantle the Constitution in order that he might install a theocracy with himself as Ayatollah Supreme Leader.
