Soapbox

Sins of the Fathers

The sins of the fathers are just water under the bridge these days. Forgive and forget!
But oh, God sends the flood to punish the sins of the mothers.

    He does it by creating new life and then breaking it, in ways large and small-
cleft lips, twisted limbs, unseeing eyes, wasting disorders, short-circuiting brains tiny holes in tiny, hummingbird hearts~
this is how the Lord of hosts, who controls the motions of the heavens whose love for the world football players write under their eyes on game days… this is how He punishes a woman.  
    So sayeth the smug politician who vigilantly guards the gates of decency against the incursion of women looking for health services and hoping to limit their family to the number of children they can afford to feed and clothe decently.
    Armed with muddy theology about divine wrath, this man- who can never know the joys and fears of carrying new life-  solemnly intones that God has revealed to him that handicapped children are divine punishment upon a woman for the sin abortion. Terminate your pregnancy, even to save your own life, and God will punish your selfishness by sending you his most precious gift: a child
… with disabilities.

     I am only a flawed and sinful daughter of Eve, so perhaps this is why I am so confused by the fuzzy math of this equation.
 ~ Why does God not similarly punish those who kill children who have already been born,
 ~ and why do so many women who have abortions go on to have healthy, happy children,
 ~  and why have so many mothers of disabled children never had an abortion at all
 ~ and how in heaven could a new, sweet life, however challenged and challenging,  ever be a punishment at all?
Why would a loving God damage a child when the child is not the sinner?
And just where exacty do the sins of the fathers figure into this divine calculus?

   If this is a punishment then, in overwhelming numbers, we are missing the message, Lord. Most of us feel just as blessed by disabled children as by the ones born whole. There are some who even seek out and adopt these instruments of divine punishment and find their lives immeasurably enriched by them.
     Our children are not weapons and their impediments are not punishments: they just draw a different rubric for success.
    When simple tasks for others are challenges the size of a wheelchair for your child, in a house where surgeries are more common than birthdays, each new accomplishment, however small, gets taped to the refrigerator of the parent's heart to be exclaimed over,  bragged about to friends and neighbors with aching pride. When limbs don't want to obey the brain's commands, the child who walks across the room becomes your olympic hero. When words are difficult, each "I love you" is a diamond sharp enough to cut glass.

   So tell me, someone, why would the God of love harm an innocent, unborn child just to make a point to a woman whose sin was harming an innocent, unborn child? Why not just make her infertile,  strike her dumb, visit a plague of insects or send one of his tried but true lightning bolt? Isn't there a clearer way for a deity to get his message across?
     I am still confused about why God killed so many abortion-less people with hurricane Katrina because of abortion. Or was it about all those wanton Mardi Gras parades? Even the peddlers of fire and brimstone can't agree,  which doesn't sound like very omnipotent communication for the guy who made the heavens and the earth.
     Still, we are supposed to believe that God, the all-knowing, all powerful deity, whose eye is upon even the sparrow, has really lousy aim and just fires random shot-gun blasts of hate at his precious children. And while we wade through the rivers of blood and pain we're supposed to figure out what in the hell he got ticked off about this time and who in the hell he was shooting at.
    God, who can put his son's face on a taco shell can't just text someone to tell them to knock it off or draw a giant crop circle in Nebraska with the international symbol for No Gay Marriage.  No, he sends spina bifida and tay sachs- a lifetime of pain to someone who did no wrong, just because he doesn't like their mother.

    Well if you have any messages for me, Lord, really,…
a simple burning bush will do the trick.