In 1492...
A little over 500 years ago a captain was forced to beach his two ships on the island of Jamaica. His crew and he would have starved to death except for the generosity of the indigenous people. They brought the stranded sailors food in exchange for little trinkets, but once half of his crew went wild and killed some of the locals, the food supply understandably stopped. Faced with starvation, the captain went onto his ship and pulled out his almanac. He checked a few charts and then went to speak to the local chief. Columbus, (yes that Columbus) told the chief that God was very angry that they had stopped giving them food. If the chief didn’t bring them more food then God was going to blot of the moon as a warning sign of what He would do to the people. Three nights later, right on schedule, there was a full lunar eclipse. As the locals started to freak out over their doom, Columbus offered to intercede in exchange for a steady food supply. The locals jumped at the chance to escape their doom, and Columbus went back to his cabin for the 40 minutes of the full eclipse. Just before the moon started to escape Earth’s shadow, Columbus came back out and told the locals that God had forgiven them. This nifty little trick saved the lives of Columbus and his crew, who continued to eat well until they were rescued 4 months later.
This is an incredible story. There’s a part of me that can’t believe that Columbus had the guts and knowledge to pull off a con of this magnitude. But every bit of awe and good impressions is immediately overwhelmed by the knowledge that this trick led to the deaths of several natives who were subsistence farmers, who only grew enough for them to eat, not enough to feed all the extra people. Not only that, but Columbus used God as a weapon by lying and manipulating people.
This level of manipulation is, hopefully, obviously wrong. But how many times do we weaponize God for our own purposes? Several years ago when one of my kids got in trouble, Hannah was having her chat with him about how different people knew what he had done and that they were disappointed in him. Then she said “And God knows what you did too.” My kid lost it. He had been holding back tears before but once he knew that God knew what he did it was over. I was the horrible parent trying not to visibly laugh.
While I don’t really know if that was crossing a line or not, I don’t have to look very hard or far to see examples where Christians have used the concept of God to augment their own arguments or point of view. Its an election year, just wait for all the candidates to interject God into policies that are anything but based on God.
Look at your own life. How have you used the concept of God as a tool? Better yet, how many times have you let God use you as an instrument to do His will? This isn’t a feel good story, but maybe we can learn from it and do better ourselves.