Dan describes a highly emotional (typical TV-Church) scenario he had experienced attending churches in his life. He describes the experience as "extremely confirming to the Christian life". Not I. My Christian "confirmations" come from verifying the bible against life as I see it around me and as I learn from those who study the world. "Who" judges ANYTHING by emotions alone!? I question whether Dan rejected Christianity or emotional hype.
In the end Dan labels Christians to be starving for miracles. I can't really argue here since I myself constantly wish for the highly unlikely to occur every so often. Yet rarely is it the case I see one. I "do" have one story though. I'm supposed to be completely blind in my right eye. Even the top doctor's of our world said so, 99.99% sure they were as they irratiated the heck out of it, cut it up, and lasered it. Heck, I came out of it with 20/20 vision! If you're wondering, I had cancer.
Even though I believe it was their extraordinary skills that did the job, it was no less a miracle.
Barker also comments on prayer. It's almost pointless to attack this since it's entirely a type of communication between a person and God. And how can you test it if it's up to God what the outcome is? The point is to be talking to God and expressing your concerns to Him. We all know He can read minds already, but how can you be friends with someone who only reads your mind all the time. Doesn't really work well. Then reading the bible tells you about Him and what He thinks about things.
You may ask then, "Why even ask Him for anything at all?"
It's a relationship. It's a verbal (or mental) acknowledgement that He is the one who can help when things are hard. Oddly enough, it even helps you realize or prioritize your "own" concerns. It's a pretty nifty setup, even "if" it's nearly impossible to know if God specifically acted on your requests or reacted from your expression of delight.
It's quite amazing as well when you see your prayers and your reactions to the bible influence your decisions and cause extremely awesome outcomes. Yet again, if you're mixing the bible with conflicting desires or getting pissed off because God isn't doing something specific for you in a certain way, your actions can become quite hostile. This is why people need people. We really need to keep each other in check. It's easy to go crazy when you don't talk to anyone who sees things from an outside perspective. Since God gave us each other I sure hope we'll accept that gift.
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