🐘 TREE 601: Jeff Gill – Pat

FFOREST has readers with a wide range of political and spiritual beliefs. I want to keep it that way. That’s why I promise not to get preachy and partisan. However, preaching and partisan politics are a huge part of my story. I can’t tell you about where I am now without showing you where I came from. Please remember as you read: I have no interest in telling you how to vote or which (non)religion to embrace.

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Here’s what I wrote in 2009, with one change. There are some parts of what you are about to read that I would write differently now. There was one part I didn’t want to repeat at all, so I tweaked it. I originally posted this one year and three months before I stopped believing in God:

This is how it looks from my little perspective: In the 1980s evangelical Christians in America went insane and believed that getting political power was the way to save the world. Maybe we thought following the example and instructions of Jesus wasn’t good enough now that we had technology and yuppies and AIDS. Maybe loving our enemies wasn’t as fun as being nasty to them. Maybe doing it the Jesus way was too hard and slow and messy for us. Whatever it was, we ended up helping to give the world President George W Bush. I’m really sorry about that.

12 years before GWB, Pat Robertson, televangelist and prophet of doom, ran for the presidency. Someone gave my parents tickets to a $100/plate Robertson fundraising barbecue. My 14 year-old self, full of evangelical-political fervour was thrilled. And he Shook My Hand. Ladies and gentlemen, I have touched Pat Robertson.

On the other hand, my dad who was a grown-up and knew things about nuance and balance and not getting completely swept away by politicians’ bluster and rhetoric, made sure to watch Jesse Jackson’s speech during the Democrat’s convention. Back then I could not understand why he would do that.

Pat Robertson died last week, aged 93. I will always respect him for recording this video with Al Sharpton.

‘Even old Pat Robertson’

We all grow slowly
Jeff