Practicing your piety before others

Former baptist pastor, and current political grifter, Mike Huckabee, recently trotted out that hoary old canard about God getting kicked out of schools and people, and children, getting shot because of it.  Huckabee takes the view that public displays of piety impress the Lord God.  God pats people--and whole nations!--on the head for their sanctimonious posturing.  

This would go somewhat against the words of Jesus, who regularly took a dim view of public pieties.  He remarked how the scribes, the poseurs of the day, liked to affect long prayers in public "for the sake of appearance" (Mk 12:40), and he didn't think much of it.  

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' most important speech in Matthew's gospel, he says, "Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" (Mt 6:1).  He went on at some length:

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Similarly, the prophet Amos had some choice words for people who liked to affect religiosity.  He didn't level his words at public display, however.  He went right after the people in church!  Amos 5:

²¹ I hate, I despise your festivals,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 
²² Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
   I will not accept them

Worship without justice is not supported anywhere in the scriptures.  You want to impress the Lord God?  Then, said Amos:  "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Am 5:24).

"We have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee says.  Really?  Any god who lets himself get pushed around so easily can't be much of a god, and any god who withdraws from the scene to make a culture war point isn't worth worshiping.  Mike Huckabee's is a shallow and magical religion with a petulant and little god. 

 

Comments

[Riz]

John: the more stories I hear about the strength and courage of the staff in that school, the more convinced I am that God was never far away from them. Clowns like Huckabee and Robertson and Dobson and Falwell make our work so damn much harder.

[John Petty]

Now that fatuous nincompoop Dobson is in the act. Lord have mercy.