Pat Robertson's Dover Comments
Pat Robertson's recent comments regarding the Dover, PA vote against Intelligent Design have created a stir in the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Two of my favorite blogs, Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds and James White's Pro Appologian, have both weighed in on it and have come down on opposite sides.Please keep reading to get my take on it and then leave your own thoughts in the comments.
My take on it is that in a blatant display of mankind's rejection of God, a perfect image of what sin is, the gospel is in order. What a perfect springboard into the Gospel on national tv. This rejection at the polls is not something that just popped up out of nowhere, as if the people had accepted God before and only now have rejected him. No, mankind - each and every member individually and mankind corporately - has been guilty of this rejection of God and his rightful rule over us since the garden. Things like the Dover vote are very good concrete illustrations of what each of us has done to God in our hearts. We have said to Him, "God, I prefer to run my own life, to follow my own rules, and to trust in my own self. Please get out of my life." And that's what ultimatey the judgement will do, God will cast sinners out of His presence into everlasting torment in which none of the common graces that he extends to us will be found, only that which we have asked for, a reality without Him.
BUT - and this is a very important BUT that must be constantly flowing from our mouths - God does not treat us with justice only. Justice would have us dead in hell (Romans 6:23), but God came to earth in the form of a man and paid the price of death that we earned. So even though the people of Dover and ultimately every person who has ever existed on earth has rejected God and asked Him to have nothing to do with us, God graciously died on the cross so that he could show us grace anyway. If we are not communicating that, nothing else matters.
So even though Pat Robertson may have been right in the content of his statement, as James White says, what a missed opportunity to share the gospel, and what a misrepresentation of Christ and His message to the world!
