Pat Robertson vs. divine justice and mercy

A friend posted a poem the other day that had been posted by a friend of a friend, so I'd like to be able to credit the original author but the closest I can get is that their name is K...

"Elizabeth Dilley

This poem was written by my dear friend K on the occasion of Pat Robertson's death. It's as profoundly theological as anything my clergy colleagues have shared, and certainly more theologically robust than anything I could say about it. I'm posting because I'm going to want to remember this poem for years to come. Maybe you will, too:

Ruminations on the death of Pat Robertson

I don’t like to think

About Pat Robertson going to hell.

That lets him off too easy.

I like to think about

Pat Robertson finding himself

In a heaven he never believed

Would exist.

Where Divine is reading in drag

To the children murdered at

Sandy Hook and Ulvalde.

While Edie Windsor

And Gertrude Stein drink coffee

In the breakfast nook

talking politics with Harvey Milk.

Where Matthew Shepard relaxes by

A stream, reading poetry to

A nameless young man whose family

Never claimed his body

when he died

Of AIDS.

Where the music plays loudly

Welcoming dancers from the Pulse

And Club Q to the floor where they

Twirl and vogue with

All the murdered trans women of color

Whose names we never knew.

Where Jesus puts his arm around

Pat Robertson’s shoulders and

Drapes them with a rainbow feather boa.

And, gesturing around him says

Come, meet my disciples."

...

 And, back when I was still trying to believe in the Christian god, I would have responded with a resounding amen. If there WAS such a thing as divine justice and mercy, it would look like this. If all believers in Christianity were like the author of this poem, I would even still be one of them, and would still believe in divine justice and mercy.

...

except...

...

If there was such a thing as divine justice and mercy, none of those folks mentioned in the poem would have been murdered. 

If there was such a thing as divine justice and mercy, AIDS wouldn't fucking exist. 

If there was such a thing as divine justice and mercy, the god from whom they spring would not have allowed motherfuckers like Pat Robertson to spend a lifetime fanning the flames of hatred that led to all those cruel and needless deaths, IN THE NAME OF A GOD WHO'S SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT JUSTICE AND MERCY.

Because let's be clear: The bigotry that led to those deaths isn't innate. It's not something that the killers were born with. It's taught. 

And the teachers have always been people like Pat Robertson.

The primary teacher of bigotry is, and always has been, religion.

I KNOW this because I was raised in a church that taught AIDS was our god's righteous judgement against homosexuals, that taught every LGBTQ person deserves eternal torture for their "choice" to be LGBTQ, that taught all gay men were pedophiles waiting for an opportunity, that taught we should watch the fucking 700 Club, that taught we should vote for the "pro-life" people who were perfectly fine with laws that allowed guns to be easily available to the people who committed all those murders. The people who contributed to those deaths grew up with those same bullshit talking points drilled into them every Sunday and every Wednesday throughout their formative years (and on weekday mornings too if they watched Pat Robertson). They contributed to those deaths, directly or indirectly, because they believed they had a divine fucking mandate to do so. 

But kids who are raised to believe the opposite of all that, behave with ACTUAL justice and mercy. Again, I KNOW this because I see that in the behavior of my own kid and my kid's friends. You won't find a less religious group of kids - or a more decent, kind, supportive, and helpful group of human beings - anywhere. And all the kid's queer friends are always coming over to our place, always happy to be here, always clearly feel safe and cared for here. Because they know that we are people who love and accept them as they are, not as a book (which "loving" Christians like Pat Robertson have for decades deliberately mistranslated and misinterpreted to justify hatred) says they should be.

If there WAS a god of justice and mercy, the scenario in the poem wouldn't be happening in an afterlife. It would have happened to Robertson when he was a kid, BEFORE he spent over fifty years proclaiming that every natural disaster and epidemic and problem in the world was the fault of gay people for existing, and liberals for allowing them to exist in peace. It would have happened to Reagan BEFORE he spent the first several years of the AIDS epidemic deliberately ignoring it because it was mostly killing gay people rather than people he thought deserved to live. It would have happened to the fuckers who shoot up schools and clubs and malls and churches BEFORE they ever even knew what a gun was. What fucking good is an afterlife where everyone learns the truth, if everyone learns the lesson too late to apply it? What fucking good would it be for people who've hurt other people to realize they were wrong AFTER they're no longer capable of hurting anyone, and their erstwhile victims are now immortals that they couldn't hurt if they wanted to?

But there is no god to teach people to not be bigoted assholes that long for the extermination and everlasting torment of people for the "sin" of loving differently than they do. 

So WE have to do it. 

Just like we have to do everything else that needs to be done in order to make the world a better place.