SoCal23 wrote:

The stories. Everyone has these stories they've heard where their brothers best friends cousins lawyers mistress' drug dealers probation officers mother was healed from Lymphoma and they take it seriously. Evangelists don't help. They peddle the same stuff. Missionaries are the worst. They're the ones with the stories about mud balls being turned into eyes and people near death coming back.
The only near death recovery I've seen was in Forks Over Knives and was the result of people in poor health taking drastic measures to recuperate.
You want a miracle? Take ownership of your life and problems and do something to fix them. I have a feeling God honors that no matter what.

But yeah, if the stories didn't exist people would stop relying on the healing factor. Empirical evidence. Everything needs empirical evidence.
Ya know, if you have to reach that far just to come up with a bunch of BS to back up what you want to believe, there's a pretty good chance that whatever you're trying to do isn't going to hold up in the long run.

I have a working theory though, that the general trends towards anti-intellectualism and mental laziness in this country corresponds to the strong but just-under-the-radar growth of Pentecostalism or near-Pentecostalism in this country. In my town we don't have any new churches lately, but the one that's expanding is the not-quite-Pente-but-close local wannabe-megachurch.

I learned very recently that my old church hasn't been able to find a Pastor since the old one retired, and what few have sniffed around the job have been Pentecostal (which would be OK for someone simply attending the church but not a member or Pastor) and/or unable to meet the licensing requirements to the satisfaction of the Association's board, so the assistant pastor is now the acting pastor, with no one to do his job...and no one is stepping up...

Yet in Penteville just about everybody wants to be a Pastor...
  

Integrity above all
Service before self
Excellence in all we do


~United States Air Force core values.


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