America

Last quarter, in the American history course that I took, the class watched a documentary film from the 80s, called The Atomic Cafe (available on DVD from amazon). The film was made up entirely of videos produced during the post-WW2 era, many of them for propaganda use by the American government. No narration was given on top of the clips; the directors let the clips speak for themselves. If you’re interested in the Cold War and the bizarre mentality that the American government had about it, I highly recommend the film.

I want to touch on a specific scene from the film, which really struck me as odd. The scene in question is one showing President Truman, sitting at a desk, speaking to the American public. He says:

“Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us instead of to our enemies and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His way and for His purposes.“

(emphasis mine)

I don’t believe in the Christian God, but let’s say he exists, for the sake of argument. As I understand it, the Christian God loves everyone. All humans are his creation, and he cares about all of us equally, regardless of what we do. Certainly, there are rules that one should listen to, but if you break the rules, you can generally get him to forgive you (depending on what branch of Christianity you’re dealing with).

So, God loves everyone. And, being an omnipotent being, viewing everything all at once, he probably doesn’t think of his creation in terms of nationalities, countries, races. Everything on the planet is his creation. God doesn’t see the globe with national boundaries pencilled in.

And yet, in the above quote, we have an American President thanking God for, essentially, letting America “find the atomic bomb” first, and then going on to say that he hopes God will help them to use the weapon to do good.

This makes no sense to me. If God existed, and we were all his creations, and he loved all of us equally, I’m fairly confident that one thing he wouldn’t want us to do would be to “find” the most devastating weapon ever created, and then use it to blow up hundreds of thousands of people. That just doesn’t come across as very loving to me.

Perhaps it’s because we’re talking about America here, an admittedly special case - at least in the minds of many people. All Americans (and probably just about everyone else who’s hooked into the world via the internet or some other news outlet) have heard the phrase “God bless America.” Our Presidents, particularly the most recent one, have regularly claimed that God is on our side. It doesn’t seem to matter what the government is doing, or how morally wrong it is - because it’s America doing it, a lot of people think it’s fine, because they have this strange idea that God is on “our side.” I think it’s interesting to note that when other countries or groups do this - like when Islamist fundamentalists claim that God wanted them to blow something up - Americans generally scoff and say that the Islamist fundamentalists are just “evil” (whatever that means).

Claiming that God is on “our” side is nothing new; nations have done it for centuries. But America seems particularly bad about it. I’ve read many times online that a lot of Europeans look at our politics with some amusement, because of how often our politicians throw God into the mix. I’ve talked to some Europeans who find it downright peculiar. I do too, but I suppose that’s pretty clear from this entry.

So - I don’t believe in God, but if you do, and you’re someone who thinks that he’s on “our side”, perhaps you should reconsider. Maybe he isn’t on our side. Maybe God is getting fed up with America tossing his name around like a football. If I were in his position, I probably would be. Nukes for God… indeed. I’m sure right below that one, on God’s to-do list, he has “Insure America secures oil supply in Iraq and Afghanistan.”