Tom DeLay Reads The Bible

This morning at 9am, C-SPAN telecast the Congressional Prayer Service from a church on Capitol Hill. During the service there were prayers and speeches for the victims of the recent tsunami tragedy. And then House majority Leader, Tom DeLay, read from Matthew 7, verse 21:

Not every one who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?"

Then I will declare to them solemnly, "I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers."

Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on rock.

And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.

I am trying to put a positive spin on this and I'm failing completely. I hope he read this particular passage as a metaphorical wake-up call to all who are not secure in their relationship with God. By using this flood to scare Christians into re-examining their own lives, I can only accuse him of being callous.

If, on the other hand, he chose to use this passage as a condemnation of all those poor souls who were swept out to sea then I can only think him a monster. What true Christian would use a terrible tragedy of this scale to mock the faith of others? Who would use the wrath of God as the explanation for the innocent deaths of so many?

Well Jerry Falwell, for one. Let us never forget that television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, pagans, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for the terrorist attacks on the USA because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

This is the sort of behavior that every good Christian man and woman should condemn outright. Men like these, men blinded by their own power to use their perverted idea of God to condemn anyone unlike themselves, should be shunned. I can only imagine that Jesus in heaven is weeping at such unnecessary cruelty.

How different is the action of a group of Buddhist monks in Canada who are selling their temple and giving the proceeds to the Canadian Red Cross for tsunami relief.

The Abbot, Thich Ngyuen, said they're following the teaching of the Buddha – to do compassionate deeds and build a life featuring harmony between human beings and nature. In this case, the Buddhists seem more Christ-like than the Christians.