It’s Wednesday, which means it’s Jesus and Mo Day. Today’s strip, called sigh, is a good one, and came with the email note “The doctors said there was almost no chance this strip would survive, but we prayed really hard and proved the doctors wrong. What do they know?”
And the caption is “I don’t know why she bothers.”
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Why didn’t Jesus just perform a Marriage-at-Cana sequel and turn water into suds?
Just a side trip, see Wikipedia, searching for “God helps those who help themselves”.
Plus, of course, if the Barmaid had phoned around and found no beer for sale would Jesus and Mo have reasoned that prayer doesn’t work – or would they have argued that God has his own reasons why prayer didn’t work in this particular case?
“Mysterious Ways. Don’tcha know?” Besides, the unseen and unrecognized troubles the barmaid experienced acquiring substitute suds are negligible since she’s an infidel.😇
Have you noticed how, when you ask Christians why God allows Bad Things to happen to people, they tend to bring up the free will argument: “if He stopped us from making bad choices, it would negate our free will”.
However, God seems to have no such compunction about manipulating the Bar Maid’s will into driving 50 miles to answer J&M’s prayers.
I am reminded of a former co-worker with whom I am “friends” on Facebook. His wife was seriously ill and in the hospital for 3 weeks. When she was released in good health, his Facebook post announcing it said “thank you Jesus.” Not sure why she went to the hospital, if Jesus was going to do all the work. She obviously did not need, in his mind, all those doctors and nurses.
And if he’s thanking Jesus for her health, shouldn’t he be pissed that Jesus made her sick in the first place? Or maybe that’s the devil’s work. You can’t win with the capricious logic of the deluded.
That reminds me of the story told by Richard Dawkins:
… when [Pope John Paul II] suffered an assasination attempt in Rome, [he] attributed his survival to an intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: ‘A maternal hand guided the bullet.’ One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a shared of the credit; but perhaps their hands, too, were maternally guided.
… and Daniel Dennett’s section on prayer in his article “Thank Goodness!“.
Well, that is one way to get undying devotion: ‘Hey, Pope! Remember how close you came to dying? I could have taken you out. So watch what you say.’
Mila is a French girl, a second-year high school student, who has dared to criticize Islam (the religion of peace …). She has been rained so many death threats that she can no longer go to school.
An especially good J & M.