Corruption in the Pastor
Corruption in the Pastor
As I listened to this show, I heard several ideas from Bob I would take issue with. The one I mention here is a classic example of one of Bob's techniques that does more damage than good to his credibility. Specifically, if you listen to the segment starting at 14:58 into the show, he takes issue with the idea of “wasting water”.
Here is Bob’s dialogue (initially he is quoting some of what a columnist name Frederick Smith wrote about him):
“Bob goes a step further however, encouraging his audience” or “his flock”, he writes, “to waste water”! Exclamation mark.
(Bob’s comments on this):
And I wonder, how do you waste water? How do you do that? If you wanted to waste water, how do you do it? I mean, God invented recycling, right? What, it you drink a lot of water are you wasting it? If you pour it on your lawn, are you wasting it? Where does it go? It goes into the grass, into the sod, it goes into the soil and then what, it disappears? No, eventually it evaporates and goes back up into the sky. I wonder if Frederick has ever heard of the water cycle. How do you get rid of a gallon of water, Frederick? If you were told that you would be dead unless you destroyed a gallon of water, you probably couldn’t do it. So, yeah I don’t know about wasting water, …
It is not to a person’s credit in a discussion when they have to resort to a definition that is not the one a common person would use. Bob is clearly not talking about “wasting” water in the customary sense of the word, and certainly not in the sense that Mr. Smith meant. For most people in most circumstances, to waste something means to use it carelessly or inefficiently. However, Bob mocks the idea of wasting water by using it to mean absolute destruction of the water. I don’t see that definition supported at all in my dictionary.
The silliness in his dialogue about water being a recyclable resource – in the sense of still existing - has nothing to do with the idea of waste. Maybe Bob should take his earnings at DBC and KGOV and “waste” it (in the classical sense of waste). He should pay twice as much as needed for groceries, he should extravagantly buy many things that he doesn’t need, he can just give some it to anyone he meets, he can stuff some of it in unsolicited advertising response envelopes. Under his way of thinking, there is no problem in doing this, he is not ultimately getting rid of the money, it just passes on into the process of economic “recycling” that it was destined for anyway, just like his claim for water. Just because those wasted wages are no longer available to him, or to his family, or to support his radio show or Church efforts, so what? The money still exists, and is circulating.
Above I stopped quoting Bob’s dialogue where I did, because next he suddenly grows up and drops his childish parody of wasting water, and speaks of it in the way we would expect an honest adult to have done from the first:
… but I do know about trying to affect government policy when those who worship the earth have fought against us developing our water resources. They fight against dams. They fight against increasing water supplies. And so then every so often everybody’s in a panic because we’re in a drought. And so we believe that we should increase the water supplies available to America, to our human population. And therefore it’s good to use as much water as you can get away with using. Use as much as you can to let the people in authority realize that they need to build more reservoirs and dams and such.
Whether or not you agree with Bob’s recommended policies on wasting (standard definition) water, it is gratifying to see that he can finally speak about the concept without having to rely on silly corruptions of the idea.
