Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Blaming the Victims?
Here's what DeLay said at a congressional prayer breakfast that seemed
to heavily focus on the tsunami; from what I've been told, this is
pretty much all he said:
A reading of the Gospel, in Matthew 7:21 through 27.
Not every one who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom
of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in
heaven.
Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not
do mighty deeds in your name?"
Then I will declare to them solemnly, "I never knew you: depart
from me, you evil doers."
Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will
be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted
the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on
rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act
on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted
the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.
Alan Colmes on Hannity & Colmes pointed this out last week, and the
[1]DemWatch blog did the same (thanks to Justin Sadowsky for the
pointer).
I certainly have nothing against Congressmen quoting the Bible as
such. Still, I wonder whether this verse was particularly suited to
the occasion. It sounds to me -- and perhaps I'm missing something --
like blaming the victim: If only they listened to Jesus's words, their
house (literal and metaphorical) wouldn't have collapsed. In other
contexts, that might make perfect sense. In this context, this seems
quite troubling. Either DeLay's view is that indeed the tsunami
victims were injured partly because they hadn't listened to Jesus's
words; or if that's not his view, then he didn't seem to choose
particularly apt words for the occasion.
Of course, DeLay might have been reminding his fellow Christians of
the importance of listening to Jesus's words -- let this event be a
lesson to us, he might be saying, about the need to rely on God for
protection. But wouldn't that still be blaming the victim? After all,
if Christians can learn a lesson from this, the lesson presumably
would be that they could avoid disaster by doing something that the
disaster victims didn't do (accepting Jesus's words).
Now I realize that some people do sincerely believe either that (1)
God exacts retribution against those who don't accept Jesus's words,
or (2) the world is a dangerous place, and God gives special
protection (including from natural disasters, though they are
presumably at least indirectly God's doing) to those who accept
Jesus's words. But people who don't share this view (like me) may look
askance at political leaders who do blame the victims of disasters
this way.
References
1.
http://demwatch.blogspot.com/2005_01_02_demwatch_archive.html#110490448510557976
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