The God Machine this week reminisces about a Saturday Night Live skit from the late ’80s called “The Church Lady.” Dana Carvey, playing an uptight religious activist, would routinely ponder moral breakdowns in society and, hoping to identify the culprit, ask, “Could it be … Satan?”
The skit had renewed relevance this week, as this report from Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green explained.
When unexplained violence takes center stage, we tend to turn to modern psychology to explain it. But there is an alternative explanation, one that has been played out in film, stage and writings since the beginning of history.
Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?
Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil? Could that explain the massacre at Virginia Tech?
Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, shouts an unequivocal “Yes!”
“Based on what I’ve seen in the news,” Roberts said in an interview, “there’s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin.”
Dr. Roberts is willing to question whether this was an example of “possession” or “oppression,” but he’s certain that the Big Bad was responsible. It’s not an uncommon conclusion this week for high profile Christian leaders — evangelist Franklin Graham said Cho Seung-Hui was acting on behalf of “the devil.”
I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but I thought I’d pass it along.
On a related note, Flip Benham, director of Operation Save America, a religious right anti-abortion group, blasted this week’s convocation at Virginia Tech because speakers weren’t explicit in referencing Jesus.
[O]ne Christian ministry leader noted that the name of Jesus was not invoked once. Flip Benham, director of Operation Save America, says he found that to be “thoroughly shocking” and calls the convocation a denial of Christ.
“Our Lord, Jesus, was not mentioned one time in that convocation,” Benham asserts. “I think … every parent who has a child that’s going to school at Virginia Tech needs to know that the name of Jesus is not going to be mentioned, even though He is the resurrection and the life and that no one will come to the Father but by Him.”
Even President George W. Bush, who attended the convocation, mentioned God but not Jesus Christ, Benham points out. “And,” he adds, “to have an Islamic imam up there in the convocation talking about having peace with one another is shocking indeed. It is a lie that has been drawn up from the very pit of hell, and we as Christians need to take a stand and speak the truth.”
The Christian activist says he was shocked and outraged as he watched the convocation.
“Shocked and outraged” at an event to comfort the students, the families, and their community. What a sad little man.