Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/290775
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 APRIL 2014 Opinion 20 I t never ceases to amaze me how many people in this country – and elsewhere, too – seem to have direct access to the mind and designs of God. A couple of years ago we were informed by means of a billboard that 'God doesn't want divorce'. Not exactly an earth-shattering surprise, I would have thought, considering he isn't even married. But of course what they meant was that God didn't anyone else to get divorced, either. It's a classic case of "I'm all right, Jack", only with the addition of: "and I'm also all-knowing and all powerful, nya-nya-nya-nyah-nyah!" Small snag in that argument, however. It wasn't actually God who told us this. I don't recall any burning bushes speaking with the voice of Charlton Heston at the time. No hands appeared in the heavens to write fiery messages on the walls of the Zebbug parish church. Instead, we got this glimpse of God's will through his entirely human intermediaries here on earth. Not just the people who erected those billboards, but also the ancient prophets on whom they relied to substantiate their claim. People like Malachi, who tells us, with spectacular conviction, that 'divorce is hateful in God's eyes' but stops short of explaining exactly how actually he got to know that little detail. In legal terms that would be a case of double hearsay; repeating someone else's opinion, which in turn was attributed to a third party. It wouldn't be allowed to stand as evidence in court. How much less should it stand as the basis for national legislation that in turn applies to everyone, regardless of whether they believe in God, or even remotely give a toss about his opinion. But out of curiosity: how do they know, anyway? What gives these people – ancient and modern – the absolutely certainty with which they pronounce God's will only on matters where it happens to coincide with their own, while studiously ignoring all the other less congenial aspects of God's will, such as his rather unequivocal command to 'judge not'? Hm. The great mystery of our time. And all times, too. I have just (for my sins) finished a marathon reading of all eight of Shakespeare's major history plays in chronological order – from Richard II to Richard III, with three Henries in between for good measure – and at every point, throughout all five acts of each of the eight plays, all the dramatis personae claimed to be acting on explicit divine instructions. Everyone except for Richard III, that is, which, in a perverse sort of way, makes Shakespeare's crookback homicidal monster the only honest one of the lot. It was God's will, for instance, that Henry V invaded France. And by an extraordinary coincidence, God's willed invasion of France happened to precisely mirror the dying words of Henry V's father, who advised his son to 'wage wars abroad' for the purely political purpose of keeping the peace at home. We are not told if it was also God's will that the inhabitants of towns such as Caen, Pontoise, Melun, Meaux and Rougement – including women and children – were duly massacred for resisting the divine invasion. Shakespeare doesn't mention any of this at all… but contemporary accounts do tell us that saintly King Henry V ordered a stop to one such massacre, only when he saw the body of a decapitated maiden in the village square, with her baby still suckling at her breast. But the good news is that God's will was being done. Sad that thousands of innocent lives had to be brutally cut short in the process, but hey! God is not exactly averse to the occasional massacre of innocents himself, as a certain feast we are shortly about to celebrate will soon remind us. Meanwhile, God kept up his reputation for mysterious movement. He would later will that the French take up arms and drive out the English conquerors shortly after Henry's death. This time, God revealed his newly revised opinion to a young shepherd girl named Joan, and even as Joan rallied her troops and successfully (albeit briefly) expelled the English from Orleans, the same God was busy advising Henry VI's government to defend the same conquest made earlier in his name. Please note that both sides worshipped One Holy Roman and Apostolic God at the time, through the rites of the same Catholic Church. Even today, many centuries and a couple of schisms later, it is still the same God they worship; only the churches are different. It is not at all clear, however, where this God stands with regard to them. Once the French issue was settled – very much in France's favour, despite God's earlier promise to Harry – God decided to meddle in the ensuing war for the English crown, too. Both Yorkists and Lancastrians (according to Shakespeare, anyway – the reality was slightly more complicated) claimed to be defending a title to the crown bequeathed to them by Divine Will. It's almost as though God were the original screenwriter for the movie Highlander: "There can only be one: now fight it out among you so that myself and all my angels and saints can sit back with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the show…" Quite a show it turned out to be, too. If Shakespeare's version is to be believed, 10,000 soldiers perished on a single day in the battle of Towton. Taken together, both the war with the French and the Wars of the Roses lasted well over a hundred years. Just think for a moment how many lives were lost in total, all because of a God who can't seem to make up his bloody mind. And that's just one (well, two) of countless wars fought between sides that were equally convinced they were fighting for the same God's greater glory. What does this tell us about God? He must either suffer from a serious multiple personality disorder, or – paradoxically – from the same clinical, calculating, murderous and duplicitous intent manifested by Richard III. Alternatively, it tells us that all those people who claimed to be the instruments of his Divine Will must have been talking out of their collective rectal sphincters. And yes, I suppose those rectal sphincters all belonged to human beings who were created by God in his own image and likeness – if you believe that sort of thing – so perhaps the two possibilities are not that far apart after all. Either way, fast-forward to the present and you will find that the underlying pattern has not changed one iota. "I think this, therefore it is the will of God." We saw it in the divorce campaign two years ago, and we saw the same process unfold this week in the form of a petition against same-sex adoptions by a Christian fundamentalist organisation called River of Love. Ten thousand people – by an interesting coincidence, the same number that died for their God on Towton field 600 years ago – signed a petition that was rooted in the same old (and obviously flawed) premise of "God's will". It urged legislators to remember the fact that they had kissed a crucifix upon taking their oath of office, while conveniently forgetting that this oath was actually to serve the Republic, not the Lord, and reminding them that God happened to share their own aversion to same-sex marriage and accompanying rights. And just as God constantly shifted sides in the Hundred Years War, he somehow managed to argue both sides in the gay adoptions debate, too. Even as I write this article a counter-petition is circulating, telling us all that 'God loves everyone'. Really? Absolutely everyone, huh? Does that include the first-born male son of every Egyptian family in around 1,300BC? Or the entire human population of the world, whom – with the exception of Noah and his family – he one day decided to drown? I guess we'll never know because, like Henry V and St Joan of Arc – or for that matter like all the hijackers on September 11, 2001, and every suicide bomber who's ever blown himself up in the name of Allah – the organisers of these petitions did not bother to inform us all how they got to know God's opinion on the matter. The equal rights campaign simply assumed that if a God exists, he would be the private God of their own benevolent fantasy universe. And the 'River of Love' unfurled a banner in front of Parliament with the words 'Jesus Loves Everyone, But He Doesn't Like Everything'… without explaining on what basis Raphael Vassallo God's will be done, if and when it suits us I might interpret Jesus' failure to ever utter a word of condemnation of homosexuality as a way of tacitly condoning its existence and acknowledging that all people should be treated equally The River of Love unfurled their message on behalf of Jesus in front of parliament... without explaining on what basis they gauged Jesus' opinion