The controversial and often foolish 700 Club Leader, Pat Robertson, is at it again. According to the Huffington Post, Robertson was asked “what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.” He responded with these words:
“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her…”
Asked later about what “’til death do us part” meant, Robertson responded by saying that Alzheimer is a form of death.
His justification is utterly foolish and un-biblical. A form of death is not death. A wise observer asked the logical question:
Would this also then apply to a spouse whose spouse has say terminal cancer or some other terminal disease?
What about the spouse of a stroke victim where the stroke victim loses all mobility and speech but may live for decades after the stroke? Wouldn’t that be a “kind of death”?
As a pastor who ministers on Sunday afternoons to the elderly–including a pianist who has Alzheimer’s– I am shocked to see this type of un-christian assessment from a christian leader. The Christian view of life is best summarized by John Stonestreet when he writes: “No one loses the image of God, even if they no longer know it.”
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