Best Christian Quote of the Year: Preacher Fail

This has to be the best Christian quote of the year:

"... [If] God doesn't destroy America pretty soon, He’s gonna have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
– John MacArthur, Christian evangelical author and preacher

One of the biggest problems facing America today is that preachers like John MacArthur are diverting us from the real problems.

MacArthur is one of those doom-and-gloom preachers who love to preach darkness and damnation. He must be pretty famous because he's authored or edited something like 150 books. (One has to suspect there's a certain amount of redundancy in his writing after the fortieth or fiftieth book.)

His big show involves the classic Christian recipe:

• Convince his audience that everything pleasurable is actually a vile sin that's damned by God.
• Point out that everyone likes fun stuff, so we're all vile sinners.
• Connect this to confusing prophecies and irrelevant myths that were written by stone-age farmers two to three thousand years ago.
• The sky is falling! God is going to get us, and boy are you sinners going to be sorry!

Here are a couple samples:

“Materialism, drunkard pleasure seeking, arrogant conceit, defiant sinfulness, moral perversion, and corrupt leadership… Do you not see [them] in America?”

"What do we have here? We have here, folks, Anthony Weiner type people…corrupt leaders. Is there ever any end to this corruption... ?"

But the real danger from preachers like MacArthur is that they want to take over America and turn it into a theocracy

"No other nation has literally been born out of a desire to be faithful and obedient to the living and abiding Word of God. America is the first nation that separated Church and State."

It's sad how many people fall for this brand of doom-and-gloom speech. There are certainly problems in America and around the world, but not the ones MacArthur is talking about.

Did you see drug users causing the subprime mortgage crisis? No, it was bankers and lax federal regulations. Did you see young people having premarital sex causing the United States to bomb Iraq back to the middle ages? No, it was the military-industrial complex working in cahoots with oil interests who had hijacked the presidency of America. When environmentalists try to avert the global warming crisis, did you see partying college students standing in the way? No, it was ... why, it was religion blocking the environmentalists!

If I believed in Satan and other forces of evil that John MacArthur preaches about, I'd have no choice but to believe MacArthur himself is working for Satan. According to Christianity, the devil works by preying on people's egotism, arrogance and pride. John MacArthur is Satan's perfect instrument.

But of course there is no Satan, and John MacArthur is just another doom-and-gloom preacher. He is running an unpatriotic and anti-Constitution campaign to turn America into a theocracy. And like so many Christian doom-and-gloom preachers, he's diverting attention from the real problems and real solutions that could actually make a difference.