OPINION:
Once again, Pope Francis has pressed forward the mantra that much of the world’s problems — hunger, overrun borders — are due to man’s failures to stop wars and address climate change.
Not so, according to the Bible. But what’s a little Bible-based reading between the pope’s political devices?
“The relationship between hunger and migrations can only be addressed if we go to the root of the problem,” he said in an address before the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, Breitbart noted. “In this regard, studies conducted by the United Nations, like many others conducted by civil organizations, agree that there are two major obstacles that must be overcome: conflicts and climate change.”
Now compare that with this, from the pope’s own supposed guiding compass, the Bible.
“You desire and do not have; so you kill,” according to James 4. “And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
Hmm. Wars come from evil desires, and hunger and poverty, in large part, from wars. That’s the word according to God, anyway.
If anybody might be expected to know the Bible-based reasons for war, it’d be the pope, right?
Nope.
For this pope, it’s all about the rotten weather.
It’s not like he’s only said it once, to this FAO crowd. Francis has said similarly on several previous occasions. In 2016, he called on participants of the COP22 Climate Change meeting in Morocco to deal with what he characterized as human-induced climate fluctuations; in mid-2015, he pleaded for world leaders to recognize the “right of the environment” and to act accordingly with regulations and agreements. There are plenty more instances in between.
It’s pretty much the pope’s thing — to call for global regulatory controls on environmental matters based on his view that climate change causes wars, hunger and so forth.
More government. More government control.
“Thanks to scientific knowledge, we know how to deal with the problem and the international community has also been preparing necessary legal instruments, such as, for example, the Paris Accord,” he said this week.
The unstated? Now if only that big bad America would get in line — the big bad America led by the big bad President Donald Trump who just withdrew from this accord.
“Unfortunately,” Francis said, “some are distancing themselves” from the accord.
Talk about the merging of politics and religion. Where’s the leftist outcry on this?
“It is clear that wars and climate change cause hunger,” he said, “so we must avoid treating it like an incurable disease.” Sigh. Progressive politics from the pope. Again.
But the Bible paints a different story of the roots of war, one that has more to do with the designs of human hearts than the designs of human-made governments. Now if only the pope would quit straying into politics and meddling into realms he doesn’t belong, and focus more on the Good Book — where, it seems, he has plenty to learn to keep him busy.
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