When an overweight, overstressed, 77-year-old man has a stroke, it is not because God “smote” him. Pat Robertson should know this is a natural biological event rather than anything God did.

Once again Pat Robertson has shamed the Christian community with his unbridled tongue. Robertson suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He also compounded his mistake by trying to claim biblical immunity from accountability when his spokeswoman said, “This is what the Word of God says.”

God’s love for wisdom and for justice seemed conspicuously absent in Robertson’s assertion.