Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor and Fox News Commentator[/caption]Carol Forsloff — Does God withdraw His love when there is no prayer in schools, therefore allowing 20 children and six adults to die? Those who see God like themselves with feelings of jealousy, anger, and rejection might think so; but there are many who disagree and believe that notion is part of the reason why more and more people seek their answers to perplex questions outside religion.
The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School is being blamed on the lack of prayer and praise in the schools by a number of religious leaders, like former Arkansas Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. These same notions were pronounced after Hurricane Katrina and the bombing of the World Trade Towers. However, these statements presume an angry God, jealous of not getting man's full attention and acknowledgment, and loving selectively. These are the characteristics we assign to ourselves, but why do we assign these same ones to God, when we are told by virtually every world religion that God is love instead?
We are also told in many churches how we should love like God, some saying that as God loves us all without qualification, we should love our brother in much the same way. Yet when tragedy strikes, many religious leaders describe God's response as a qualified one, selective according to those who pray or don't.
In that same fashion, God is seen as saving the lives of those who praise him, so we pray for our health and our lives. We ask God to give us what we need and want, as if God is a finite being who makes decisions based upon selective judgments and qualifications.
To blame God for the deaths resulting from mass shootings, or other forms of violence, presumes God functions like ourselves and to blame ourselves by accusing one another of not having enough faith, the wrong kind of beliefs, selectively judged, or not praying, again where selectivity may be used to define prayer and in what manner again assigns to God our own negative human qualities and how we make demands. We get angry if someone does not say thank you for a favor or service we perform and believe God too requires the same attention and in the same way. Yet how can finite beings comprehend the infinite and reduce God to a being who looks on idly by, with the power to stop a shooting in Connecticut, and then decides not to intervene because prayer is not allowed in the school?
While some religious leaders maintain their beliefs that there is insufficient faith, and therefore an increase in violence, many of these same leaders side with the gun owners on the lack of gun control measures and promote concealed weapons that can be carried to church, as the law permits in Louisiana.
For many people believe God is love means God is everywhere, loving unconditionally sinner and faithful and yet allowing each person the freedom to make responsible or irresponsible choices. It is the lack of making those responsible choices that creates the violence among us and the lack of love, cooperation, trust and help required of a community that truly cares for everyone.