Giving God due credit.
24Aug. 09
Ray Comfort linked to this Faux News video on his blog as proof that God performs miracles for amputees. For those disinclined to click through to watch the video it concerns one Sgt. Jerrod Fields, an army veteran who lost his legs to a roadside IED in Iraq but who is now training for the paralympics.
While I applaud his recovery and ambition, God is given a lot of credit in the interview — but not nearly all the credit he deserves. In order to give him the props he deserves, I’ve endeavoured to write a complete list of things God should be thanked for on this occasion:
- For ensuring that the host only took three tries to get Sgt. Fields’ name correct, we thank Him;
- For granting the presenters the wisdom to treat an army veteran like a retarded ten year old, we thank Him;
- For taking both of Sgt. Fields’ parents — one suddenly in a shooting and one to cancer — we thank Him;
- For ensuring that the IED went off at just the right time and position to not immediately kill Sgt. Fields, but to permanently disable him (thus allowing him to enter the paralympics), we thank Him;
- For saving Sgt. Fields’ life — something to which advances in medical science and his surgical team were largely irrelevant — we thank Him;
- For granting Sgt. Fields a way to run again, which had little to nothing to do with advances in prosthetic technology, we thank Him.
That seems about right — did I leave anything out? After all, I wouldn’t want to shortchange the benevolent ruler of the universe.
Tags: amputee, fox news, god, paralympics, Richard Hughes
August 24th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Yeah, you missed thanking him for setting off the IED. And for making the taliban place it there. And making sure Sgt. Fields vehicle wasn’t proofed against IED’s. The list is endless.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:39 am
I’m really beginning to wonder if one day Ray Comfort will come out and tell us we’ve all been Poe’d.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
One of the sadder aspects of this, is not that Ray Comfort and FOX can buzz this up as a testament to God (as the commenter points out the irony), but that you can almost predict, from the fact that this guy is in the US military, he would see it that way himself.
The odds of it being any different than this are very small, and this is the real problem, not the agitprop that FOX and Comfort run with.
Christian Theology runs so completely thought this young man’s military life, and has so buried the secular or thinking that underpins the constitution of the USA, or the multi denominational thinking it was designed around — that all is left is this very childlike notion of God being something that does you favors, and looks out for you.
Al Jazeera has done several very candid and I think thoughtful exposes on this … and if this is what Al Jazeera can film, think of what you aren’t seeing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TME6X9LQ4y8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI7evXxWHTs
As mainline denominations fade, non denominational ideas rush in, and critically, they exploit the very tolerance and openness that pluralistic societies grant to religion.
This strategy is brilliant and should motivate us to find richer targets than Ray Comfort to spend fire on. The rise of non denominational childlike american evangelism demands a spophisticated and as yet non existent counter strategy from the secular community.