Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Praying with Chutzpah

I was trying to told off on considering Chutzpah of the Week candidates until the Iowa circus (oops!, caucus!) had run its course. However, as I observed a little less than a month ago, attributing chutzpah to overtly devout Christians is a bit like eating potato chips: You can't stop with just one, particularly when the "next one" happens to be Pat Robertson, who can always be counted on to raise the bar for overt devotion. According to a report on Huffington Post, Robertson uses the beginning of every year for a personal communion with the Lord, which appears (at least to Robertson) to be the most direct channel accorded to any mere mortal since Moses had to take dictation for the Ten Commandments and all the subsequent amendments and elaborations. Robertson then feels obliged by his faith to share what the Lord has beamed into his cerebral cortex. So, thanks to Huffington Post, we now have it: vox Robertsoni, vox Dei:

What I'm praying about is China. I'm asking for 250 million in China. We haven't had that breakthrough yet but I think we're going to get it. God's going to give us China. And China will be the largest Christian nation on the face of the earth. They're going to come to Jesus.

In other words God is going to take on the entirety of the Communist Party in the People's Republic of China and negotiate a bargain under which 250 million Chinese will "come to Jesus." My guess is that the Party ideologues in China have their own words to describe this sort of thing; but, from where I sit, the noun "chutzpah" seems to suit just fine. However, since I am willing to be open-minded about these things, if Robertson does add 250 million Chinese to his flock, I suppose I had better work on singing "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz" with a bit more sincerity!

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