In political theater, it seems that the only people who claim to have one-on-one dialogues with God the Almighty are the right-wing, conservative nut cases. Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy claims that the Man Upstairs’ precious words compelled him to fight against the United States’ government.
“The Lord told me . . . if (the local sheriff doesn’t) take away these arms from federal agents, we the people will have to face these arms in a civil war. He said, ‘This is your chance to straighten this thing up,’” Bundy told The Spectrum of St. George. It seems highly doubtful that God would end his sentences with prepositions. But whatever you say, Bundy.
Bundy is a Mormon, and attributes the standoff in Bunkerville, NV to inspiration from the heavens. Not only did Bundy believe that the word and hand of God moved him to commit an act of deluded spiritual warfare, he said that the hundreds of Tea Party gun-nuts who showed to protest the U.S. Bureau of Land Management were “spiritually touched.”
“If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong, would the Lord have been with us?” asked Bundy. “Could those people that stood (with me) without fear and went through that spiritual experience . . . have done that without the Lord being there? No, they couldn’t.”
Okay, so now the protest was a “spiritual experience?” Bundy’s delusion and spiritual confusion is now starting to flirt with outright arrogance.
The problem with people like Bundy who place their eccentric and unacceptable behavior at God’s feet is that the tactic is merely a diversion implement. Saying “God told me so” is just a cop-out to alleviate the perpetrator’s moral and mental (if any) fabric of any guilt or doubt should whatever questionable stunt they attempt backfire. It gives the “prophet” a safety net of blind courage to commit the disgusting or, in Cliven Bundy’s case, the ridiculous.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
