A Guest Post by Matilda
A friend and I are both deconverted Christian fundamentalists. We both wonder what we might do in the situation I’ll describe below. I’d love for the wonderful commentariat here, or our leader, Bruce Almighty, to give us some very clever — or witty — responses to this.
We live in a town that has the longest High Street in Wales. Like most High Streets, the main shopping streets in UK towns, it’s a sea of closed up shops these days. This one has only 30% of its shops still open. The city fathers have appointed a ‘czar’ to revitalise it. The local newspaper reported this and asked shop-owners how they are faring. They replied — badly. It’s unusual for anything Evangelical to be reported on in the UK. Still, prominence was given to the owner of the ‘Heavens Above’ Cafe on the High Street, whose picture had him smugly sporting a sweater with John14:6 on it. He claimed they were thriving and said, “We hold a monthly healing service and lots are healed.”
I commented that if this is so, why didn’t he and his fellow god-botherers travel two miles to our local large hospital and empty it and send patients to their cafe instead. Just think how wonderful our country would be if it didn’t have to finance the National Health Service (NHS). Patients could go along to ‘Heavens Above’ and, for the price of a sandwich and a coffee, get healed. My comment was up for about two hours, then it was deleted as ‘not adhering to community guidelines. ‘ So, apparently, lying-through-your-teeth for Jesus does adhere to them.
My friend has waited six months already for a major operation under our very overstretched NHS. She would love to go into ‘Heavens Above’ to challenge this arrogant assertion, but she can’t bring herself to give them any custom by even buying one coffee. But we’d both love to just go along and challenge their claim to miracles of healing and for them to explain to us why they aren’t down at that hospital.
Any witty repartee, any snarky put-downs, or irrefutable arguments that we could use would be most welcome. We’re open to suggestions from all you clever people! Help us out here!
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Good evening, Matilda. The question you want to ask the cafe owner is legitimate. He should have an honest answer ready, since he wants to be famous now. It’s interesting that your comments to him were removed – it sounds like you have censorship just like we do.
Saying anything at all is pointless. You could think up all sorts of witty responses but would get absolutely nowhere. Most people in the cafe are presumably immune to its religious aspect, and making any remark is likely only to lead to you having to make some sort of philosophical defence and we know where that leads! You could perhaps walk in, preferably with friends, clutching copies of Dawkins God Delusion, or Hitchens God is not Great, or Coyne’s Faith versus Fact, and read these as obviously as possible!
Maybe send an amputee into the cafe along with a television news crew to document the healing? 😉
No matter what you say to these people, they will not listen. I call that brainwashing.
It’s possible the guy is lying through his teeth and the café isn’t doing as well as he says. It’s equally possibly no one was actually healed at all.
I don’t know if I can come up with anything good, but I would ask why ‘god’ only chooses to heal the certain people that come into their café. If ‘god’ was so powerful, merciful, loving, or whatever else Christians claim, then surely everyone would be healed regardless of whether or not they begged for it and also only the ones that showed up there.
I’d also ask why people with ALS are never, ever healed – not once – not by anyone religious – ever – and then ask them to prove me wrong.
I’d probably keep posting different versions of the comment they removed. Each time they remove a comment, put up a new one. But I’m menopausal and cranky so maybe don’t listen to me…..😄
Ask him to turn coffee into wine.