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Joni Eareckson

In 1967 Joni Earekson was a 17 year old girl when she went for a swim with her sister in the Chesapeake Bay. She dove off a raft, hitting a sandbar fracturing her spinal cord. She instantly became a paraplegic. (Listen to her tell her story.) She spent 8 months in the hospital and 2 years in the geriatric unit of an institution. She became angry, bitter and depressed. There she played “Blackbird singing in the dead of night” over and over and over again.

The Liability of a Personal God

Joni explains that in a very evangelical way accepted Christ at age 14 and “put him in my back pocket. I pulled him out on Christmas and Easter. I prayed like putting dimes in a vending machine.”

What she describes is something like the basic religion of American culture, what Christian Smith calls Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism. Now suddenly, after this calamity ugly questions start to bubble up. Isn’t it God’s job to keep this kind of thing from happening? Why should a supposedly all powerful God allow something like this to a good person, even a Christian person?

When bad things violate our American expectation of a nice, happy, normal life, we find that the Christian version of God quickly becomes a liability. Not only did a catastrophe strike, but now you also feel betrayed.

If there is no god and the universe is just one long string of chaos or physics then there may be a human to blame (the person who build the raft, you for diving, your parents for letting you, etc.) or there is no one to blame. It sucks, but really, if you think about it, you’re just a product of chance anyway and if you had 17 good years you should be happy. A lot of people don’t even get that. Suicide then of course becomes a rational option.

If it is just an impersonal universe, well it still sucks but then it’s just odds or karma. If its karma maybe you were a pedophile in a previous life and you’re just getting what you deserved. Better make the best of the wheel chair or your next go round might be even worse!

But if you live in a worldview where God is good and supposedly loves you and then THIS happens? Then it’s personal. Then it’s betrayal!

Call Me Bitter! Continue reading →