National Football League tight end Benjamin Watson is warning that the United States is treating God like a "cosmic vending machine" that it only seeks during times of crisis and asserts that the country may be suffering the consequences of pushing God out of the public square.
The 37-year-old free agent, appeared on Fox News Monday to clarify a Facebook post he issued following the deadly school shooting last week in Parkland,
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Watson explained that as people across the nation took to prayer following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,
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"Whenever we have a natural disaster or a hurricane or an earthquake,
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"What I am saying is that we can't come to God as if He is some sort of cosmic vending machine that whenever we have a problem we just reach out to Him, 'Lord," Watson stressed. "No. We need to be submitting to Him daily in our lives. We need to be coming to Him every day and saying, how can I help people? How can I reach out to people? What are the things I can do for the person who is being maligned? What can I do for the vulnerable so they don't feel like they have to lash out and do things like this? Lord, give me wisdom to do things like this.'"
Watson added that being able to come to God with such requests "comes from a daily walk with Him" and is "not something that we just turn to when we have a crisis."
"Now," Watson assured. "But more importantly, when we look at what is happening in our schools by taking prayer out of schools and by taking the Ten Commandments and God out of schools,
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Watson asked why is it that people can seemingly trust God during times of horror and tragedy but not during times of peace."What cries out to me the most is that people are hurting. [Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz] went through so much in his life,
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Earlier in the Fox News interview, Watson criticized American culture for gravitating "toward violence."
"Every time there's an instance like this, we talk about respecting life. And while that's very important, we have to look at our culture as a whole," he said. "We incarcerate our young men at alarming rates, something really horrific, we vote for things that create the disintegration of the family, we murder 60 million of our unborn since Roe v. Wade — we're really a culture that gravitates toward violence."
Watson explained that while Cruz must be held accountable for his crime, there are also societal aspects that need to be changed to help prevent future shootings.
'Hold on,"We need to step back and say, what are we as parents teaching our children? How are we as teachers dealing with kids when they have certain conflict in the classroom?'" he said. "All these things are very important."
