According to a new Pew Research Center report, most U.S. adults said God played no role at all in the last two presidential elections.
About one-third of Americans thought recent election results are part of God’s overall plan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean God approved of the winner’s policies. Only a few respondents said God chose the winners because of their policies.
I have a lot of respect for the Pew Research Center. I consider it a reliable and nonpartisan organization, and their findings regarding how adults feel about God’s role in presidential politics are noteworthy.
However, one thing was missing from their report.
Nobody asked God. That nettlesome point required me to consult the only other reliable and nonpartisan polling group I know of, in order to seek additional information on the matter. Of course, I am talking about the Yarbrough Worldwide Media and Pest Control Company, located in Greater Garfield, Georgia, and Junior E. Lee, the organization’s esteemed general manager.
Junior not only knows politics top to bottom; he is also a pest control professional. Walter Cronkite may have been his equal when it came to reporting on world-changing events, but I doubt Walter knew a chinch bug from a chinchilla. Junior E. Lee is one of a kind.
I found Junior at Arveen Ridley’s place spraying for cow ticks, or as he refers to them: Rhipicephalus microplus. (Junior loves to throw a little pest control jargon into his conversations to impress people.) He said when he got finished at Arveen’s, he was planning to drop by Aunt Flossie Felmer’s and spend some time poking around in her drawers. Looking for fire ants, he said, but I wonder.
Anyway, I asked him if he thought God much cared about who got elected president. Junior said God probably liked Ronald Reagan and maybe Harry Truman and George Washington, but wasn’t overwhelmed with the rest of them. He is certainly not happy with the current office holder, who is selling Bibles made for less than $3 per book in China, a country with no official religion, and then charging $59.99 per Bible in the U.S.
The president has pocketed a cool $1.3 million as a result.
I’m not sure I needed to know that because this is going to get me some grumpy mail from some folks. I am in no way blaming God for this, but He seems to have created a lot of people with no sense of humor, and I do hear from them on occasion.
Junior said he thinks that right now, God is having second thoughts about why He created us in the first place. Had He known we were going to invent guns — which, by the way, got their start in Godless China back in the 9th Century — he might have scrapped the whole Adam and Eve experiment.
Serpents get a bad rap in the Old Testament, but there is no record of them ever having shot anybody. Plus, serpents don’t have fingers to self-righteously point at who is to blame for all the gun violence. According to Junior, God says snakes are looking better and better.
And then there is the schoolteacher from Baxley, Kandiss Tayor, running for Congress in Georgia’s First District and riding around on a campaign bus that says, “Jesus Guns Babies.”
Junior says God doesn’t like the implication that Jesus guns babies and suggests Taylor put commas or periods after “Jesus” and “Guns.”
Otherwise, atheists and gun control advocates are going to have a field day. Taylor has been so busy claiming voter fraud from her run for governor in 2022, when she got a whopping 3% of the vote, she probably hasn’t realized her evangelical faux pas.
I asked Junior if he had any more insights to share. He said to tell you that in his opinion, mixing lemon and vinegar in water is just as good a flea dip as any store-bought product. I told him I knew you would appreciate knowing that, but any other thoughts about God and politics? He said Let him think on it. He was in a hurry to get to Aunt Flossie Felmer’s and poke around in her drawers.
He still says he is looking for fire ants. But I wonder.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.