Dear Reverend Buddy: I am a Christian televangelist in hot water after calling for the assassination of the godless president of Venezuela. I apologized for political reasons, but isn’t it clear that God approves of killing wicked leaders?
——Yours in Jesus, Anonymous
Is that you, my wayward simoniac protégé? You of all people should know that the Lord prefers to punish wicked leaders not by killing the leaders themselves, but by killing their people. Take 1 Chronicles 21, when King David sinned by taking a census and God struck down 70,000 of his people in atonement. Or Numbers 16, when the Lord killed thousands over a political debate between Moses and Korah. Or Exodus, when our heavenly Father smote “all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast” because of Pharaoh’s stubbornness (12:12). The only true way to right your wrong is to call for the execution of the entire population of Venezuela. Go forth and sin no more.