Saturday, July 5, 2008
Who Did This For Me?
Surely it is not unjustified for some people to believe that Christian faith is an institution of imagination and theories rather than reality, when the reality-based “evidence” for God seems either non-existent or even contrary to his existence (seriously, check the grapes in that vineyard), while the readily available “evidence” for God seems to justify belief in any imaginary being. For instance, answered prayer never was a reliable source of assurance for my faith when I was a Christian. An applicant for a job prays that God would grant that job, and lo and behold, he does. Someone grows weary of their cold symptoms and prays that God would heal them, lo and behold, on the third or fourth day after getting a cold, the person starts to feel better. A car breaks down and the owner puts their name on the prayer list at church for needing financial assistance to get it fixed, lo and behold, God inspires a generous parishioner to help out. A difficult decision is stressing someone out so they pray for the Holy Spirit’s help and then they get “peace” about it. There are so many examples of “answered prayer” that could either be (a) more easily explained by ordinary means, or (b) explained via the existence of an extraordinary being other than God, such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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I had a severe sinus infection and upper respitory infection. I could only catch a few hours of sleep each night and coughed repetitively every day with great intensity. My husband and I were at a church conference out of state and my husband was greatly worried about me. He was preparing to take me home to my doctor, but after one of the meetings we asked one of the ministers to pray for me. He and several other ministers who see miracles on a regular basis prayed for me. I had never met any of these people before. One man told me God showed him that I had inhaled a substance that was poison to me, a mold he said that caused this sickness. Unbeknownst to him the office I worked in had been flooded and I worked in moldy conditions for two days before getting sick. They prayed for me and immeadiately the heavy congestion in my lungs was gone 100%. I could breath again without coughing. My sinus pressure disapeared. My coughing stopped. I felt the presence of God all over a very sweet comforting feeling. It felt tangible not emotional. It was an amazing supernatural healing. Not a cold that healed naturally after several days. No this was instant and miraculous.
God exist and He does heal and he does answer prayer. This is just one of many testimonies I can tell.
People of other faiths have similar testimonies. Even the followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have examples of those kinds of powers, not to mention the Greeks testimonies of what their gods have done and Islam's accounts of Allah's interventions.
I am impressed by your story and have no reason to doubt that the events unfolded exactly as you portray them, but this doesn't prove the existence of God in general, or your God in particular. Also, it is a slap in the face of faithful Christians who encounter similar problems and pray fervently, only to find that God chooses not to intervene at all.
Proclaiming that others from other belief systems make similar supernatural claims does not create an argument negating the validity of my claim.
I certainly didn't heal myself, and the person praying for me certainly had no way of healing me apart from God's empowering.
Also many people do endure sickness without a miraculous healing. That doesn't mean that I'm special or that their is some problem with them. Again saying that many people don't get healed is not an argument against my testimony.
My healing was to the glory of God and nothing more.
I have prayed for people myself and seen them healed. One lady was healed of deafness in one of her ears. I saw another young lady's fingers which were bent backwards from some kind of life long joint condition straighten before my eyes. I prayed for a woman with cataracts in her eyes and I saw her clouded eyes clear and she had some of her sight restored. My husband prayed for a man with a hearing problem where he had a constant ringing in his ears and had continual problems sleeping. The next day he told us the ringing was gone and he slept fine for the first time in years.
I've encountered the presence of God, the healing of God, words of God where people who had never met me knew intricate details of my life even down to things I was internally dealing with that no one knew about, but me. There is no way God doesn't exist. I have experiential knowledge of this fact. However, I know that my experiences do not give you cause to accept that as proof of His existence.
But maybe you might consider these things and ask Him to reveal Himself to you in a tangible way.
Karla, of course my statement doesn’t negate the validity of your claim. It only points out that your claim doesn’t establish anything for the “knowledge” you say that you have. You have no more reason to believe that the Christian God healed you, than Pastafarians have to believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster healed you. As far as anyone knows, your healing was not to the glory of God, but rather to the glory of the Tooth Fairy. Your stories may have really happened, but they don’t testify to the existence of God….except by faith. Which, since you are an apologist you will know, means that your case is circular. You say you have experiential “knowledge” but what you have is experiences which you attribute to God by faith, though through faith you could just as easily attribute those same experiences to other imagined beings.
Keep in mind that I am not the one who has something to prove here.
Either I am lying and my testimony is untrue, or I am deluded and my testimony is untrue, or I was healed instantaneously like I claim. If I experienced instantaneous healing to what would you attribute it? Certainly you cannot put a fictional Flying Spaghetti Monster on the same level as belief in God.
I would have to have been present I think in order to properly evaluate the data of your story and consider possible reasonable explanations. If none existed, I would of course be forced to consider the supernatural. But nothing about the story that I have been told so far indicates that the Christian God is any more likely to have been the cause than a Flying Spaghetti Monster...which is my point by the way...without any attempt to actually support your claim of God's existence with reasonable proof, it is not a more likely claim than the claim of Pastafarians.
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