By Linda P. Campbell
lcampbell@star-telegram.com
Can I say just a word for God?
He and I have this personal relationship going, you see. And not once in my 55 years has he confided notions of smiting innocent children. Not even for the sins of their fathers.
The generous God I know is all about, even in the public square. And his peace-loving son, whose birth we believers are preparing to celebrate, well,
his most violent act was tossing over the moneychangers' tables in the temple.
To me, God's more about making sure the Catholic guilt surfaces at appropriate times. He talks through glowing sunbeams pouring through clouds in the distance when you're on the road. And he works his ways even when we're not paying attention.
That Christmas card from my brother-in-law in Houston didn't arrive without a stamp or postmark all by itself, after all.
Miracle on 34th Street notwithstanding, the U.S. Post Office couldn't have pulled off that minor miracle without an invisible hand.
A few years back, in the too-short-lived TV show
Joan of Arcadia, God showed up everywhere: as a bus rider, a girl on the playground, in the local bookstore, always challenging the teenager of the title to choose the right way but not always showing a clear path.
It was TV, but it depicted the nature of life for believers. God's always there for guidance, but we have the power and responsibility to decide. Free will is an awesome -- and sometimes awful -- thing.
Which brings us to Mike Huckabee, once a Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor and presidential candidate.
After the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, Huckabee said things that started a kerfluffle about prayer in schools and God and Americans' heathenism.
On a Fox News show, Huckabee said new gun laws wouldn't help without putting the fear of God back in people's hearts:
"We ask why there's violence in our schools but we've systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability." (
bit.ly/12qfI7O)
A "PTA mom" named Kimberly Burkett then wrote a pointed response on the "Educate for Texas" blog of her husband, Jerry, an elementary school principal in North Texas. She said God never left schools but is present in the efforts of educators who "work daily with homeless children, hungry children, abused children, broken children" and "feed their bodies, characters, minds, and souls." (
bit.ly/SJ0WZ6)
Other backlash, some of it much harsher, prompted Huckabee to retort on Sunday. (
bit.ly/T2q0H70).
He yearned for a time when kids got in trouble for "talking in class, chewing gum, pulling a girl's pigtails, or slouching in our school desks."
He complained about a society in which everyone gets a trophy, the "natural family" isn't the gold standard, expensive toys substitute for parenting and kids sit at the dinner table glued to their smartphones.
I've heard teachers lament about kids who come to school without a sense of respect for themselves or others, without a firm grounding in personal responsibility and appropriate behavior, without the kind of fundamental values and social tools they should have been taught at home.
Violence and sex and moral ambiguity too often are glorified in popular media. The worlds of politics and business too often act as though greed, selfishness and demonization of others are not only acceptable but profitable, that only chumps follow the rules.
Huckabee suggests that we don't call things "sin" enough; he prefers absolute rights and wrongs.
Moral relativism can be dangerous, but so can its opposite. Absolute "wrongs" in this country at one time prevented people of different races from marrying and women from voting.
Perhaps mostly simplistically, Huckabee asserted that "when we as a nation feared God, we didn't fear that a 20-year-old with a high-powered rifle would gun down our children in their schoolrooms."
When I was in first grade, an indelibly horrific murder occurred in Dallas. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald shot a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. (
1.usa.gov/cbGdHd)
In November of 1963, a 23-year-old with a deadly rifle gunned down our president on a public street in downtown Dallas. That wasn't about a nation not fearing God.
Linda P. Campbell is a Star-Telegram editorial writer.817-390-7867Twitter: @LindaPCampbell
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