Monday, June 23, 2008

Miracles & Magic: Part IV Have We Lost Our Way?

I’m involved with several other blogs, forums etc. On one of the forums, it is a secular, medical forum; I raised this story of Neil Beagley as a medical-ethical discussion. It was interesting. The non-Christian medical providers all agreed that this whole situation was outrageous. A family letting a boy, suffer and die, from a very easy to treat medical condition.

But there was one dissenting voice, an out-spoken Evangelical Christian on that forum. His point, both on the public forum and to me in private was, “Who are you to say that God was not behind this. That the boy’s physical death may be pale in comparison to some spiritual lesson that God wanted to teach the group.”

Have evangelicals lost their moral compass? Only the Evangelical on that forum thought this behavior was okay. Have they lost their freaken minds? Really, so their God is the kind of God that would intentionally created a boy with a small urethra, then allow it to close up, then allow him to spends weeks suffering (from a problem that even I could fix in 5 minutes with a catheter) until he died from uremic poisoning? That this was God’s will to reach someone something like patience?

Have evangelicals lost their moral compass (or minds) to the point that they don’t see Benny Hinn and the many others like him (just watch Daystar for an afternoon) as an incredible, evil, manipulative con-man? Non-Christians sure do. Can we not oppose the evil done “in the name of Christ” because we have this deep fear of, “What if it really is Christ behind it?” If we think that there is even a 1% chance that God is behind Benny Hinn or the Oregan church that allowed this poor boy to suffer, then we really don’t know God at all. We know some Dualistic – Platonic created god, but not the God of the Old Testament.

If you look at these things closely, you would realize the great harm in Dualism. How this world becomes so insignificant, that only that which you can label as “spiritual” has merit.

More to come.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had an Old Testament professor who once said he thought most Christians was Marcionites at heart. The tend to want to do away with the Old Testament. I think I might add to that list the gospel of Matthew, James and I John (just as Marcion did).

It is a shame indeed that many can't see through guys like Hinn, Bentley, Copeland, etc. to see that they are frauds.

Caron said...

For a very insightful look at Hinn and others like him, Justin Peters speaks out against WoF leaders by holding a seminar called, "A Call for Discernment." You can see it by clicking "demo" at http://www.justinpeters.org.

Justin has cerebral palsy and did his thesis on Hinn. He has been to over 7 different Hinn crusades and seen mothers holding their vegetative children in their arms hoping for healing... He see the hundreds that the camera never shows, in stretchers, etc... The ones the camera never shows...

He spoke at my church and comes highly recommended by my pastor, Dr. John MacArthur.

MJ said...

Thanks for telling us about Justin. His web page looks interesting. I'm glad there are those preaching against the Christian con-men.

A friend of mine, married to a gal from Austria, told me that when her (Christian) parents were visiting the U.S. and saw Daystar one afternoon, they thought it was a comedy channel. They thought the preachers were all actors.