Huckabee on the Newtown massacre

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Mike Huckabee’s response to a reporter’s question about theNewtown massacre has been reviled by the liberal media, the religious left, and atheistbloggers. However, Jerry Walls, on Facebook, does a good job of putting Huckabee’sstatement in context.
Jerry WallsYesterdayCONNECTICUT....

I just heard the tragic news out of Connecticut and turnedon the TV to hear Mike Huckabee make an astute, but sad observation. Thereporter asked him where God was in all this. Huckabee noted that is an oddquestion given that we have removed God from our schools and want nothing to dowith Him and the notion of ultimate accountability for acts like this one.
   Jerry Walls Well, of course, God cannot be literally removed, butstudents can be, and are, educated as if He does not exist. I do not want todraw any simplistic connections here, but in the long run, you cannot deny orignore the ultimate foundation of morality, and indeed meaning, without thishaving profound and far reaching consequences.
   Jerry Walls Thomas Senor, I'd say that is unfair to Huckabee. His point,I take it, is that there is something profoundly inconsistent in wonderingwhere God is in times like this, yet utterly ignoring him, if not outrightdenying him otherwise. If there is serious intent to the question, God cannotbe rationally ignored and trivialized the rest of the time.
   Jerry Walls Well Joshua Toepper and Thomas Senor and Jeremy James, infairness to Huckabee, he went on to say that God would be there in the form oflots of people showing love, in the form of counselors who would try to makesense of this for the children and so on. So I only cited part of his quote. Soperhaps you should be upset more with me than with him!
   Jerry Walls No, I think he made a valid point that it is odd to wonderwhere God is in moments like this while assuming otherwise He either does notexist or is utterly irrelevant.       Jerry Walls Noting incoherence is not merely chastisement. He went on tomake the positive point in addition to noting the implicit incoherence.
   Jerry Walls Zach, I think his point was just there is a profoundinconsistency in invoking God in matters like this, but utterly denying andignoring him the rest of the time.       Jerry Walls Just got back from the gym, and while there, I recalledanother important point Huckabee made, namely, that what we are dealing withhere is ultimately a matter of the human heart, and that no legal or politicalmeasure can remedy that.
   Jerry Walls Well, I'm sure he did not mean to imply that laws arefutile, in fact, I am sure he believes not only in law, but in God as theultimate foundation of law. But his point was just that there is somethingdeeply irrational about such behavior that no legal measures can eliminate.
   Jerry Walls Zach, I think it may have been a bit of both. And if hemeant it in the latter way, the general point that I would argue is correct isthat if we take God seriously, we do have both grounds to make sense ofmorality as well as motivation to be moral that is utterly lacking when God isleft out of the picture. That hardly means of course, that all problems aresolved by invoking God.
   Jerry Walls Certainly it is reasonable to wonder where God is in atragedy even if you think no religion should be favored. But historicallyspeaking, education in America was not functionally atheistic, indeed, it wasbased implicitly if not explicitly on a Christian worldview. Now, education isnot merely neutral religiously, it is functionally atheistic. It means littleto nothing to say students can pray if they want to, while God is nevermentioned in history class, or chemistry, or biology class. When the wholeeducation proceeds as if God either does not exist, or is irrelevant, that isthe overwhelming message that is being sent. Even considering the possibilitythat biology might be studied in a way that includes the option, among others,that the world was designed by God is resisted with ferocious intensity. GodMUST NOT be discussed as a serious reality in contemporary education. So inthat sense, God is excluded. We cannot of course make God small, but we can actlike he is, and proceed as if he is and make a small to vanishing place for himin how we think and live. And when we do, yes, there is something odd aboutsuddenly asking where he is.
   Jerry Walls My experience was similar to yours Tom, but I thinksecularism is far more aggressive today and our culture at large is much morepost-Christian. Secular education is more deliberately non-religious andresistant to any consideration of God. I agree that the issue is not one ofprotection by God, but a culture that lacks any coherent vision of moraleducation and the meaning of life is ill equipped to form its students in theways of virtue and character. And that is bound to have consequenceseventually.
   Jerry Walls And Brian, my guess is that if Huckabee were on the scenewith those grieving people, he would be hugging them, praying with them andcomforting them. But his role on a national TV show offering commentary is adifferent role than that of pastor, though he did include some pastoral pointsin his remarks.