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Having examined the logic of the Why Doesn’t God Heal Amputees? argument, I want to move on to address the specific verses misquoted during the course of the argument. The main verse that we will look at here is John 14:13—“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (ESV).

As a result of the above verse, the tradition has become that virtually every Christian prayer ends with the words, “In Jesus’ name, Amen” (or some variant thereof). This, however, is a misapplication of the passage.

Indeed, even a cursory reading of the Scriptures will show us that the use of a name is far different than a “tagline” at the end of a prayer. God is infinitely concerned for His Name. For instance, Ezekiel tells us twice:

You will know that I am the LORD, when I deal with you for my name’s sake and not according to your evil ways and your corrupt practices, O house of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD.’ ” (Ezekiel 20:44)

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.” (Ezekiel 36:22)

Furthermore, Jeremiah pleads on behalf of Israel:

For the sake of your name do not despise us (Jeremiah 14:21)

Daniel states:

O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.” (Daniel 9:19)

Even the first petition of the Lord’s prayer is “Hallowed by thy Name.”

The examples could easily be multiplied. And before we get further, one thing ought to be glaringly obvious already. When Jesus commands His followers to ask for things in His name, He is claiming divine authority. This passage is first and foremost an indication that Christ did indeed view Himself as divine. (Another indication that is often overlooked is the fact that all the prophets who spoke from God would says, “Thus says the LORD” whereas Christ always said, “Truly, truly, I say to you…”)

Any Orthodox Jew alive at the time of Christ would have recognized that Christ’s words were blasphemy…unless He was God. No mere man has the right to have petitions brought before God in his name. Consider for example what is being said if we use someone who is not divine: “In the name of Todd, I ask for this.” This illustrates how ludicrous this would be in any other context. The only explanation that makes sense is if Christ is claiming divinity.

The second thing to note about this passage is what it means to pray “in the name of Jesus.” This is not simply adding the words, “In Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer. Instead, praying “in the name of” someone has a more legal sense. While this isn’t used as often these days, it is by no means absent from English either. For example, Rage Against the Machine has a song called Killing in the Name with the chorus “Killing in the name of” with the implied philosophies being the reason for killing (yes, I own Guitar Hero II). And of course there are other songs that fit this: Stop in the Name of Love for instance.

Our legal system still uses this concept. Judges act in the name of the law such that judicial pronouncements must be obeyed. When a judicial order is executed, the authority of the order comes from the law. But consider what would happen if someone served a judicial order that did not come from the law but instead was invented whole cloth by the person serving the order? What happens to that person?

He himself is judged by the law. Now suppose what would happen if someone prayed for something in the name of Jesus when Jesus Himself does not want it. Would that prayer be answered in the affirmative? Obviously not.

(By the way, using the judicial example above could cause some confusion here, so I want to be clear: praying for something that is not God’s will is not inherently evil, as masquerading as a judicial employee is. After all, Christ prayed that the cup be taken from Him. However, the key is that in all things you end the same way Christ did: “Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.” A Christian can pray for what he wants regardless of whether it is in the will of God as long as he remembers that in the end we have to submit to God’s will, not our own.)

Again, praying in the name of Jesus is not the adding of magic words to the end of a prayer in order to get the formula to work right. It is to submit to the will of Christ and to pray for what He wants to occur. Praying in the name of Christ is not a trick way of getting whatever you want; the terminology is precise and accurate, regardless of how badly the words have been misused by atheists and Health & Weathers. When we pray in the name of Christ, we are praying with His authority, His will, and His goals in mind, not ours.

In keeping with Gene’s recent theme on Triablogue about reasons why we’re not Arminians, I’m going to add another one. I was looking at YouTube today (it was Saint & Sinner’s fault for providing the link to the Machine Video) and happened to stumble upon Ten Questions That Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer. It was put forth by http://whywontgodhealamputees.com. After the philosophical naivety that led off the video wherein we are told how wonderful our college education is and how it enables us all to think wonderfully (I really must wonder what this guy would do if he ran into a nihilist, let alone an empirical skeptic), we finally get to the questions which are, indeed, rather devastating.

If you’re an Arminian.

But for Calvinists there’s not a single problem with any of the questions posed by the video. In fact, the basic gist of the argument can be defused by one simple point: sin is real.

Arminians do understand this to some extent (thankfully), but it does take a Calvinist to understand just how bad sin is. We have this built in with the doctrine of Total Depravity. Sin is serious, and as a result a sinful world gets what a sinful world deserves.

Despite the fact that atheists will use it as an excuse that I’m avoiding the other “hard” questions, I’m only going to look at the main question, as found here. Why won’t God heal amputees?

The claim is made:

Does God answer prayers? According to believers, the answer is certainly yes.

For example, at any Christian bookstore you can find hundreds of books about the power of prayer. On the Internet you can find thousands of testimonials to the many ways that God works in our lives today. Even large city newspapers and national magazines run stories about answered prayers. God seems to be interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.

It is indeed true that God answers prayers. However, I must point out from the start that most of the claims of answered prayers in the world are not true. That’s right, all those Internet testimonials and national news magazines…Christians shouldn’t put any more stock in them than atheists do.

In fact, God most certainly does not seem to be “interacting with our world and answering millions of prayers on planet Earth every day.” And logically no Christian should assume this is the case. After all, God has never promised to answer the prayers of the non-believer.

And this brings up another point. In the video, the last question asked was “Why do Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians?” The answer to this question is relevant here: they don’t. Instead, what you have is professed Christians divorcing at the same rate as non-professing Christians. If you instead correlate the divorce rate to how mature a Christian is in his or her faith (as evidenced by Church attendance, reading of the Bible, etc.) the divorce rate is far less. But given the fact that every American is de facto a Christian, this will automatically skew the data since everyone is a “Christian” even when they only attended Church once in 6th grade.

So already we see the question is posited on a false understanding of why God would answer prayers in the first place. The site continues, giving the example of Jeanna Giese, the first (known) person ever to recover from rabies without a vaccine. We’re told:

According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna’s father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna’s plight and they said prayers for her.

And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine.

Of course, the “global prayer circle” didn’t work. Whether God was active in healing Jeanna or not is irrelevant to the number of people who were praying for her. God either did or did not heal Jeanna for His own purposes, which He is under no obligation to inform us about.

Now I do not blame the atheists for thinking that Christians believe the above. If I went by the tripe that was published in the Christian book stores and by those same articles on the Internet I’d come to the same conclusion that this is what Christians believe. Thankfully, however, I get my prayer theology from the Bible and not from Family Christian Bookstore. As a result, the proposed experiment that Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? proposes doesn’t phase me. The experiment is this:

For this experiment, we need to find a deserving person who has had both of his legs amputated. For example, find a sincere, devout veteran of the Iraqi war, or a person who was involved in a tragic automobile accident.

Now create a prayer circle like the one created for Jeanna Giese. The job of this prayer circle is simple: pray to God to restore the amputated legs of this deserving person. I do not mean to pray for a team of renowned surgeons to somehow graft the legs of a cadaver onto the soldier, nor for a team of renowned scientists to craft mechanical legs for him. Pray that God spontaneously and miraculously restores the soldier’s legs overnight, in the same way that God spontaneously and miraculously cured Jeanna Giese and Marilyn Hickey’s mother.

If possible, get millions of people all over the planet to join the prayer circle and pray their most fervent prayers. Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.

Now the first problem with this experiment is of course the fact that it is a logical fallacy to assume that because God does one thing one time that means that He must do the same thing another time. This is the same problem that we find in The Prayer of Jabez (just because God answered Jabez doesn’t mean He’ll answer you in the same way), so again the atheists can be excused for their misunderstanding. The experiment is flawed because it doesn’t treat God as an agent, but instead as a scientific law. That is, the experiment is predicated on the belief that God must be mechanistic and must respond to all prayers in the same way at the same time.

But think about people instead of laws. Suppose that you were told, “I e-mailed Bill Gates and asked for $100 and he gave it to me.” You say: “I don’t believe you. And I’ll prove you’re wrong by e-mailing Bill Gates and asking for $100 and showing he won’t give it to me.” You then e-mail Bill Gates and he does not give you $100. Does that prove Bill Gates did not give the other person $100?

Of course not. So the logic of the experiment is already flawed. But there is a deeper problem that Calvinists can immediately spot. The experiment is based on finding “a deserving person” for the healing. Now we’re dealing not only with groups of non-Christians whom God has never promised to answer, but we’re also dealing with a non-existent entity in a “deserving person.”

No one deserves healing from God. The fact of the matter is that the wages of sin is death, and part of death is the decay of our bodies in illness. A whole and complete body is not owed to anyone. God does not have to heal anyone at any time. If He does, it’s because of His mercy. But if He does not, He has not done any injustice. In fact, by simply using illnesses to slowly kill us, God is already acting mercifully by not instantly doling out justice. Instead, He is patient and slow, such that no one has an excuse for continuing in evil.

And it is this fact that healing is not owed to anyone wherein the atheist has made his largest mistake:

God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna’s every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.

God should be answering the prayers of amputees too? Such language is grating on the nerves of the Calvinist!

So we see yet another reason why it’s a good thing to not be an Arminian.

Check out this sweet video.

H/T: Saint & Sinner.

So, some freak from New Zealand (not, surprisingly, Russell Crowe) called the cops and said he was raped by a wombat and learned to speak Australian because of it.

He was charged with making ficticious phone calls and sentenced to community service. Last line of the article:

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock’s life.

I’m thinking…

NO WAY!

UPDATE: On the other hand, I guess this proves once and for all that Foster’s really will teach you how to speak Australian!

I went to bed two hours early last night so I could catch up on sleep.

So I woke up three hours early.

I BLAME BUSH!!!!!

(Note: The title of this blog should be sung to the tune of The Most Lonliest Day of My Life by System of a Down. It’s an intentional grammatical error. Shoot me now, kill me later.)

Okay, I have proof now that I am the most unluckiest guy on the Earth. I mean, I’ve known this for some time…but further evidence is further evidence.

I went to ye olde doctor today about mi cyst, and they got the results back. It was a staph infection, but the good news is that it is responding to the antibiotics I’m on.

BTW, quick aside… In medical jargon, when a bacteria “responds” to a treatment, it means it dies. That’s not exactly a response is it? I mean, shouldn’t it be more like: “After treatment this bacteria doesn’t respond to any stimuli whatsoever”?

Oh well. As I was saying, so the PA looks over my cyst and says, “Everything looks good. How are you feeling?” And since I was already there in the doctor’s office and such, I said: “Mostly good, although I do feel kinda…off.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not really sure. I guess the closest thing I can compare it to is that I feel slightly, I dunno, carsick or something. Got a bit of a headache and am slightly nauseated. Nothing to write home about, but it may be related to the staph infection.”

So the PA pokes and prods, listens to my intestines and my heart, then sticks her whatchamacallit instrument into my ear and says: “Oh, goodness. How did you manage to get an ear infection on top of all this?”

I was like: “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope. Something’s definitely going on in there.”

I must be the only person on Earth who’s gotten an ear infection while taking antibiotics. Because last week they did the same poking, prodding, and looking at my ears, etc. and I did not have an ear infection then. But apparently, I got one over the weekend.

I blame Bush for this. And Global Warming. Which is the same thing.

Oh well. Now for something completely different, I read recently (in a book, no less; but I don’t remember which one now–coulda been The Eighth Day by John Case or Riptide by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child since I’ve read both of them in the past week or so) a quip about archeology that went like this.

Archeologist: (Pointing to a strange figurine) This was probably used for religious purposes.

Main Character: That means you don’t know what it was used for originally.

I bring this up because I noticed I was still wearing my name badge from work when I got on the bus. In the year 4008, someone will dig up my name badge and say: “Hmm, this piece of plastic must have some kind of religious significance.” Because in 4008 no one will have the slightest clue what the heck those stupid name cards are for. My name badge will become another version of a St. Christopher’s Medallion.

Hey, Catholics can eat their hearts out. I’ll be a saint in 2000 years. Just you wait and see!

Speaking of Global Warming, we got a bunch of it piled up outside right now.

Oh well. There are more important things today. Namely:

He is risen.

DOOM!

I think perhaps one of the best things to remember when you think of Global Warming is the quip from Monty Python when they see the castle at Camelot.

“It’s only a model.”

Yesterday, I learned the fundamental difference between my doctor and my dentist. See, when my dentists says, “That’s the worst of it” as he injects my gums, he means it. After that, my gums usually go numb and everything’s fine.

When my doctor (or more specifically, my doctor’s PA) says, “Don’t worry, that’s the worst of it” what she means is “for now.”

Yup, yesterday I got the suspected boil lanced by ye olde doctor’s PA (my doctor was booked, although he did come in in the middle of it and ask how everything was going before heading back to his next patient). In any case, they’re doing a bacterial culture on it just to verify whether it was a staph infection or not (the PA thought it probably was).

In any case, the procedure went about like this. First, due to the location of this cyst (i.e., my tail bone), when the PA and a nurse went to lance it, I told them, “I feel more sorry for you having to look at my butt crack than you should feel for me.” Of course they laughed because they knew how much pain they were about to inflict, which made me feel not in the least bit sorry for them after all!

It starts by them injecting a “numbing agent.” I think it’s “Agent Orange.” All I know is it BURNED. And they injected it almost directly into the cyst, although the surrounding area was swollen enough that pretty much my entire lower back felt like the cyst. Then the left for about fifteen minutes, at which point I almost went to sleep. This was just to prepare me for the cruelty of being woken back up.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. I felt pressure as they drained everything, but that was it. No real pain. Then suddenly… PAIN! LOTS OF PAIN!!!

The PA asked me, “Can you stand about twenty more seconds of this?” To which I responded: “AGHDFUASHFSJLKHDSALHLASUFHLJQWHFLJFSGASLKJDGH!!!!” She took that as a “yes” and kept going.

Apparently, she found a pocket that went right to the nerve. In any case, the nurse told me that I went completely white and they thought I was going to pass out at this point. It was, quite literally, the second most painful experience of my life (the first being when the Avs didn’t make the playoffs last year…okay, not really. But when I sprained my ankle a few years back, that hurt so bad I pounded my head on the sidewalk in a vain attempt (because I was wearing a bike helmet at the time) to knock myself out).

So to sum up, next time please waterboard me. Seriously. Drain the cysts of Gitmo terrorists so they can experience REAL torture. And never trust your doctor (or his PA) when they say “This is the worst of it.” They’re lying.

I got to talking to a coworker today about my favorite Christian musician, Steve Taylor. He always had the best lyrics. But he was also always a cut above everyone else. Unlike the famous quip Doug Wilson once said (”Everything the world can do, Christians can do five years later and not as well”), Steve Taylor was always ahead of his time.

Just look at him in 1984: “I Want To Be A Clone” at Cornerstone. It sounds better here, but the Cornerstone version is important….because

Here’s his 2003 Cornerstone version.

Yeah, same guy. Same place.

No, really.

Oh well. That’s just prelude to one of my favorite Steve Taylor songs: On The Moshing Floor, also done at Cornerstone in 2003.

!..! Rawk on !..!

We need Steve Taylor back :-)