Moses Guilty & God Gets Off

The headline, “Moses sentenced prison for parting waters,” was irresistible. I couldn’t wait to read if this was a take on the Bible story or some kind of satire. Well, in fact, it was about a real-estate developer, Charles Moses, who tried to divert an Idaho creek to benefit a real-estate project. When denied the permit, he went ahead anyway. The court was not amused and he lost in both the criminal court and at the appellate level.

This would lead the reasonable blogger (a possible oxymoron, now that I think of it) to wonder at how biblical miracles and other “Acts of God” might go through our own legal system. Let’s not even look at the tough ones, like making the sun stand still. Parting the Red Sea, however, would definitely have some environmental impact. One could foresee the waters backing up into the Upper Nile and causing floods in the Sudan, as well as sending savage rip-tides through the Nile Delta. Alexandria would have been a mess. Good thing it hadn’t been built yet. The Pharaoh’s OSHA would have rightly found the whole miracle to be unsafe and drowning a definite risk. I’m afraid God would have been in real trouble.

In fact God does get sued from time to time (and no Mahoney will not be an issue in the piece). My favorite case was when, after a hurricane in Florida, a man’s damage claim was declined (so much nicer sounding than “denied.”) because the hurricane was an “Act of God” and therefore not covered. Quite reasonably, he looked around and found a number of churches and temples that claimed to be, not only God’s agents on earth but God’s exclusive agents. He did what any good American would do. He sued.

Cutting to the chase: His brilliant idea did not pan out, and the religious organizations wiggled off the hook. But it was great fun to read how their lawyers argued against the theory of “agency” and therefore, responsibility, while trying not to deny their special relationship with the Almighty.