God, Please Bless Patton Oswalt (Whether he wants you to or not)

Although I didn't list him that way, Patton Oswalt would qualify as Artist of the Week - he is a comedian, actor, writer, comic book consultant, and much more - although I will admit that I didn't know his name until this week.  Like last week's Artist of the Week [Mark Lowry?? - how soon they forget] Patton has something to say that is worth hearing.

If he HAD to show up on a blog like this one, though, I suspect that he would be happier to be guesting as Atheist of the Week.  I'll admit that this is not a feature that I had considered before, but if there are more atheists out there who can write like Patton Oswalt, I might have to consider it.

In the wake of the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, he wrote something that left thousands of Internet readers moved and encouraged.  I'll refer to part of it below, but if you go to his website - Patton Oswalt - you can get a link to his Facebook page to read the whole thing (you might have to search a bit for it - Facebook is, admittedly, still a bit of a mystery to me).

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After acknowledging that what happened in Boston was [exceedingly] "horrible"   he goes on to say:


". . .  I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity.  But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. . . .This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago."

 Although the wording was different, he was echoing another message that went all over the Internet in the wake of the bombing.  This one was from Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers fame.  Years ago he had written: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

 
Patton continued: "So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will.'"

BTW, this is not the time to discuss the differences between Patton Oswalt's world-view and mine.  This is just an opportunity to give thanks for someone who has made good use of language to remind us of something that helped keep some kind of hope alive for a wide and varied audience of people, many of whom were probably also ready to throw in the towel on this whole humanity thing.  Using language well is a gift for everyone involved.  As it says in Proverbs, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."  Good job with the golden apples, Mr. Oswalt.

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 [Editor's note:  For those of you wondering about his name, yes, he is named after General Patton.  His dad is a retired Marine Colonel, who also has some stuff worth reading in an email to his son that was pasted on Mr. Oswalt's Facebook page.]

[Second Editor's note:  For the record, while I'm relatively sure that Patton Oswalt would assume that I do find humanity "inherently evil", that is not the language that I would use to describe a fallen Creation - if I could paraphrase from above, I would say that we live in a state where our wiring gets snarled and points us towards darkness. For those days - and for all the others - that makes me want to celebrate light.]