During this Thursday’s edition of the 700 Club, host Pat Robertson fielded a question from a grieving mother who asked why God allowed her 15-year-old son to die.
The woman, who identified herself as “Cristina,” asked, “Why does [God] allow us to go through this pain and torment? As a mom, I do everything in my power to protect my kids from this.”
The question was heartbreaking, and it continued:
“What is the point? I am confused and angry. Please help me understand. I have been faithful to the Lord alone, so why?”
According to Robertson, it could very well be that God snuffed the kid out before he had a chance to become an alcoholic, or *gasp* an atheist.
“These things happen. We live in a world of wickedness,” Robertson said. “And God does not necessarily spare us from these things. He will teach us once we’re in the difficult situation, He will help us to overcome it. But not necessarily will He spare everybody from — you’ll say, ‘Why does my Father allow this to happen?’ The loss of a child is a terrible grief. But, you know, the thing about that child at 15, maybe he was, you know, living for the Lord at 15. I don’t know anything about him; I’m presuming he was.”
Robertson explained that there was no guarantee that Cristina’s child would have grown up to be the model Christian that she’d hoped for.
“So what would’ve happened maybe 10 years from now?” he continued. “Would he have started drinking? Would he have gone away from the Lord? What would’ve happened? So God, who sees the end from the beginning, knows what would happen to that child, and because he loves the child … He wants to bring him to Heaven forever, and he wants to spare him some of the bad things that would happen down the road.”
Suggesting to a grieving mother that her dead child was possibly on a path to wickedness is downright cruel and at the very least poorly thought-out, but that’s the nature of Robertson’s brand of Christianity.
“I’m just speculating,” Robertson clarified. “But I mean, God’s in charge of everything. And believe me, He is not some big super daddy who will spare all of us from pain. We are all going to have pain.”
As The Friendly Atheist‘s Hement Mehta points out, Robertson’s advice falls way short from a moral perspective:
So if I have this right… God loves us so much that he would kill us, putting our loved ones through never-ending emotional pain, just to prevent us from questioning His existence.
Those don’t sound like the actions of a loving Lord.
Those sound like the threats of a brutal dictator.
Featured image via screen grab
