Gawd Damn It

According to the AP: “Richard Roberts told students at Oral Roberts University Wednesday that he did not want to resign as president of the scandal-plagued evangelical school, but he did so because God insisted.” And also: “Roberts said he wanted to ‘strike out’ against the people who were persecuting him, and considered countersuing, but ‘the Lord said, 'don't do that,'’ he said.”

I know that God is omnipresent and all, but does He really have time to micromanage like this? Does a supreme being actually offer legal advice in civil cases? (Criminal, maybe, but tort law?)

Maybe I’m just jealous of a guy who has a direct line to the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly-good Creator of the universe, but it sure seems to me like Roberts hasn’t given us the inside dope on all the conversations he’s had with the Man. For instance, did God tell him to engage in what the lawsuit calls “lavish spending at a time when the university faced more than $50 million in debt, including taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel to the Bahamas aboard the university jet?”

If so, then God sure has some funny priorities, and for that matter, an odd way of conducting business, too. I mean, why put the girl on a plane? Couldn’t He just whisk her to the islands via His omnipotence? Air travel seems way less difficult than creating a stone so heavy He can’t lift it—and still lifting it!—a task my evangelical friends assure me is well within His awesome powers.

You might wonder why God didn’t tell Roberts not to spend all that cash in the first place, but apparently, God likes these contractual conditions. On Wednesday, Roberts said God told him he would ''do something supernatural for the university,'' if he stepped down from the job.

Maybe the deal was, Roberts takes the fall and God gets His name in the papers.