Several years ago, in the months after the September 11 attacks, two American clergymen with habitual foot-in-mouth disease got themselves into some trouble. Jerry Falwell appeared as a guest on Pat Robertson’s television program, and during that appearance, the two men agreed that the 9/11 attacks may well have happened as a result of God’s judgment on a wicked nation. These two had rounded up the usual suspects—homosexual activists, anti-family media moguls, and the like—to receive the blame for the judgment that they saw meted out by God using Al Qaeda as the “rod of his hand.”
I’m sure that 99.9% of the things that Falwell and Robertson say in the course of their public lives are completely unobjectionable and reasonable, but the journalists of this nation have discovered that if you pay attention to these guys for a few months, they’ll spit out something that sounds utterly bigoted and narrow-minded. That was how most people saw this particular statement. Recently, Robertson got into some more hot water for asserting that God had struck down Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in retribution for Sharon’s surrender of a part of the Promised Land. Open mouth; insert foot.
As undiplomatic as the Falwell/Robertson theory might seem, it is not a completely ridiculous idea. God has, after all, used outside powers to chastise his people in the past. In our reading today we find Assyria referred to as “the rod of my anger” and the “club of my wrath.” We aren’t to understand the attack by the Assyrians upon Israel as simply a random event of history. We aren’t even to see God as simply lifting his protection from the twelve tribes and allowing Assyria to encroach. No, it’s quite clear here that God caused the attack. “I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me.” Nearly a thousand years later, Attila the Hun came to be called the “scourge of God” as he attacked a decadent and wayward Roman Empire.
Is Al Qaeda a latter-day scourge of God, sent and dispatched to punish our nation? I’m not nearly enough of a prophet to answer that question—and neither are Falwell or Robertson—but it is conceivable. My point, however, is not what cause Al Qaeda to attack but the fate of those whom God sends as the “rod of my anger.”
Assyria, after doing God’s work, fell victim themselves. This didn’t do the Northern Kingdom of Israel any good, but it did happen. God will use the wicked to punish those who have strayed and then will punish the wicked with somebody else. It all seems like a convoluted Victorian novel.
Since none of us fall into the “scourge of God” role, what can we learn from this passage? That’s a good question. I suppose what I’m left with is an admonition not to succumb to the Falwell-Robertson Fallacy. Let us not suppose that we have God all figured out, that we know his moves better than he knows them himself. That way lies a dangerous arrogance.
Tune My Heart is primarily an aid to the devotional life of its author, Mark Browning, who holds the copyright for this material. It is provided online in hopes that some will find it edifying. All contents, unless otherwise noted, may be redistributed freely provided that you give credit for its origin and do not charge anything.