Pat Robertson is right

wing and so I can understand why people on the left of the political spectrum are up in arms about his comments calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It also tends to jive with the left's way of thinking. Peace at any cost and there is never a time for war or at least war should reserved for very rare occasions. That is consistent with their philosophy and so I can understand why they would be offended by Robertson's comments.


But what I don't understand it the Christian right's upheaval. I've have never heard any of them up in arms about bombing and killing thousands and thousands of Iraqi citizens in order to rid that country of a dictator. Is that war justified but if you go directly after the dictator without first killing thousands of citizens than that is wrong? Is this just because it is not the 'traditional' way of overthrowing governments? I don't hear much crying about killing 120,000 people, 95% of whom were civilians, in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is war only O.K. after we have been directly attacked?


I don't' know enough about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to know if he is a large threat to the United States or not. But if he is, and if war is justified, which most Christians I know believe there is a time to go war, than it just seems to make sense that you would go to war with the man at the top if you can do that without having to kill thousands of Venezuelan citizens in the process.



These are the issues that Christians should wrestle with and help provide Biblical wisdom for. What we don't need is to simply knee jerk and name call because someone's words don't sound politically correct and may provide bad PR for the church. If good PR is our goal than there are a whole lot of things we believe that we shouldn't say publicly. But the truth is God hasn't called us to be good marketers. He called us to tell the truth and be salt and light in a world that needs to hear the truth.


tags: Pat Robertson Hugo Chavez Venezuela