A Faith Healing Failure, 15 February 2008

At the end of the Debate and audience questions, several people started claiming healings of various kinds, describing miracles that they had seen.

One earnest woman described how prayer had cured her difficulties with TMJ [jaw pain caused by stress], but had unfortunately not yet improved her eye problems.

After all, John 14:14 attributes "Anything you ask in my name, I will do it" to Jesus.

Jonathan responded with "All of this talk of healings sounds like nonsense to me. But here, I have a [large, visible] scape on my elbow. Pray and heal it right now."

His debate opponent agreed, and about 8 other Christians from the audience came up to perform a "laying on of hands" on Jonathan's wound. In front of everyone, they prayed silently for a full minute.

When they removed their hands, they had completely failed to heal the elbow. It was clear, specific, public, and undeniable.

Either Jesus was lying, and did not actually mean "anything you ask in my name, I'll do it" -- or perhaps the Gospels of John and Matthew misquoted Jesus.

Perhaps the Bible should be amended for "truth in advertising", with a little footnote* that says: * -- "anything" doesn't mean "anything;" it means "anything except for a supernatural event when a skeptics are observing."

As expected, the complete, undeniable "Failure of Prayer" did nothing to lessen the faith of those involved. After all, the TMJ went away, didn't it?