When God Speaks

Some of you may remember the iconic TV commercial from the 1970s for a well-known investment broker, in which groups of people are conversing, and the voiceover announcer whispers, “When E.F. Hutton talks…” Immediately, the people stop whatever they’re doing, and there’s dead silence. The announcer finishes with, “…people listen.”

Now we’re about to elect a President (as well as other public officials), and this question always comes up: Are we comfortable with a leader who consults God before making critical decisions?

Complicating this is the question of whether God speaks to Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. in the same language. Suppose someone doesn’t consult God at all, but relies on his or her own judgment, bolstered by life experience (yes, someday we may elect an avowed atheist as President).

It’s hard to come up with a correct answer to these questions, so we have to fall back on what we’re comfortable with. Personally, I don’t have a problem with a President asking God for advice. I figure that whoever holds that job needs all the help he or she can get, from any effective source. For me, the issue is not whether God speaks. I think he or she does. The issue is about whether those in positions of leadership are listening.

And that’s just the beginning, because it doesn’t work like the E.F. Hutton commercial at all. When God speaks, most people don’t stop to listen. There’s interference. As a seasoned radio operator, I can tell you that it’s often hard to pick out the signal you’re listening for out of the interference and static. But if you have experience, you know the signal when you hear it.

This is a gift not all of us have. We can ask God for advice on whom to vote for, and we may not hear the answer. What’s left is Plan B – using our best judgment to determine which candidate appears to be the best at picking out that signal through all the interference – including what’s coming from his or her own head.

And I think we know that when we hear it.

Guns Are Our Thing

It’s a little amusing to me how quick we are in the United States to bash other cultures for odd or even barbaric behavior -- adulterous women being stoned to death by fundamental Muslims, Chinese eating dogs (or Hindus NOT eating cows), etc., when we have ubiquitous guns. It’s been our little thing for a couple of centuries now, and while it may seem perfectly normal to us, it’s not in many other civilized countries.

As expected, the shooting at the Colorado movie theater is igniting a new debate about gun control. Personally, I still think there are things we can do in this area without depriving citizens of their right to own guns. We probably can’t take away those that are already out there, but we could stiffen the qualifications for purchasing a gun, especially a concealed weapon, with really thorough personal and psychological background checks, including social media postings, etc. If that costs more money, make the buyer pay the freight.

By now, it has been well established that we’re in much more danger from armed wack jobs in this country than we are from international terrorists. BTW, there is NO justification for any private citizen owning a functioning automatic weapon.

Any new control measures at best will only slow things down – they aren’t going to make us instantly safe. That will require a cultural change – and such changes are possible, if we have patience. It has taken hundreds of years, but smoking tobacco, while still tolerated, isn’t cool anymore. In spite of anti-slavery laws, it took more than a century to afford black people their full legal rights, and that change is, in practical terms, still in progress. In the case of other countries, can we expect the Muslim world to instantly give up compelling women to wear burkas? So how long is it going to take for guns to be uncool here?

OK, how about some good news: Initial reports out of Colorado say that police are getting good marks for their response to the Aurora shooting incident. Public safety communications systems there have drastically improved over the years, allowing different agencies to talk to each other when a wide-area response is needed. What spurred these changes? Columbine.

We often learn things the hard way, but eventually, we do learn.