Even at my most rah-rah spiritual, certain kinds of "reasoning" seemed so empty to me that I couldn't get myself to repeat the party line, and I was embarrassed when fellow Christians did.
So I'm driving home and I turn the radio to 99.5 FM, KKLA in Los Angeles, the Frank Sontag show. He's a motivational speaker turned evangelical apologist. He is much more of a 'preach to the choir' guy than his predecessor, the venerable Frank Pastore, and I don't listen often as a result. (I'm not complaining that an evangelical show should choose topics that would interest atheists, but I can only take so much "How can we make prayer a bigger part of our Christian Walk(tm)?")
Anyway, on July 31, 2013 the segment was about Christian women wearing revealing clothing to church, and whether it was a source of stumbling. A woman, Vera, called in to announce that God was answering her prayers left and right.
The first answered prayer was when Frank took her call on the air. You see, she had just been praying to God--the Creator and Sovereign of the entire Universe--that she would make it on the air before they changed segments, and she was able to confidently announce to us that God answered that prayer.
Evidently she was sure she was not going to be on the air, but God performed a miracle to make it happen. Maybe he made someone ahead of her in the call line hang up (thus violating their free will). Maybe he didn't take control of their brain and make them hang up; maybe he just triggered a tiny EMP field and dropped their call so Sister Vera could get through. Or maybe he took over Frank's brain and made him answer Vera's call first, or maybe it was an intern who gave Vera priority. Either possibility has free will issues, but Free Will isn't a big deal in the Bible, anyway, unless Christians need to fall back to it to escape the Problem of Evil.
However this miracle was performed, Vera made it on the air to share her equally amazing tale of answered prayer.
Speaking of the topic of women dressing modestly at church, Vera had gone to the store that afternoon to shop for a new dress, but not before praying to God that He would help her make a good (modest) choice.
She saw an orange dress that she liked, but she wasn't sure if it was modest enough for church. (Incidentally, she sounded like she was in her 40s or 50s. She was not some young girl, this was a mature woman who didn't trust a Bible-trained conscience to make a good decision; she needed to take this one directly to the Man Upstairs.) Obviously in answer to her pre-shopping prayer, when looking more closely at the rack of dresses, she saw that the store did not have it in her size. An answered prayer!
How could such a prayer have been answered? I guess the first prerequisite is that God had to know that Vera would go shopping for a new dress at this store and fall in love with this dress fit for Gomorrah, but He's omniscient, so I'll grant this.
Now obviously the Spirit can't bear witness with her spirit that this dress is not appropriate, because that would be too easy. No, obviously He has to be sure the dress is not even in the store for her, lest she succumb to the temptation to buy a dress that shows a little too much cleavage or leg, and leads to the downfall of countless chaste Christian men. (Sounds like Vera has a very healthy body image, so that's a good thing.)
So what did He do? Did He cause the purchasing manager to order five of every size, but only four of Vera's size, so they would run out before she got there? Did He take over the brain of another shopper and force them to buy the dress first? Did He remote control a stock person to keep them from stocking Vera's dress on the rack? (I sure hope none of these people suffered job loss or any other consequences of having their brains momentarily controlled on Vera's behalf.)
When I hear stories like this, I think of the kids in Africa who die of malnourishment and disease. I imagine them in heaven, watching this unfold, thinking, "For millenia you've done nothing to alleviate suffering in my home village, where 60% of the children will die before age five, but you jumped through hoops to prevent Vera from buying a dress that might have been a bit immodest. Nice priorites, Big Guy."
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