"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." - Martin Luther King Jr.

***

I was at St Andrew's Cathedral a few weeks back, and one person was giving a testimony. He said that his family was Taoist, and when he was young he used to argue with his Christian friends (presumably uttering words and performing actions that caused both religions to be insulted in the process). Then someone told him that as a rational man, it behooved him to give Christianity a chance and to find out more.

He then continued, talking about how he was pointed out of a crowd at a chalet which he was attending with Christian friends (thus no doubt being susceptible to peer pressure), and said that from that moment his faith was ignited. His dating a Christian girl no doubt had something to do with it, and there was the usual story of someone putting their hand on his eyes and his bursting out in tongues.

He then started talking about the stock market of 1985, and how he was saying to himself: 'Jesus, he will help me in my stock market experience' and asked him to cause the stock market to go up. The next day, God caused the market collapsed due to his omnipotence and omniscience. The market was closed for 3 days.

He liquidated his share position and realised he had lost $350,000. His family and friends were unable to help, so his only hope was to turn to the God who had bankrupted him. He quoted Jeremiah 29:11, and sought help from Christians. They didn't give him any financial help, but told him to let go, experience the 'peace of God' and let God take over. He and his girlfriend asked for mercy.

Then, his sister who was overseas suddenly gave $7,000 of her hard-earned savings to him. She was not a believer, and when he asked her why she did it, instead of citing sibling bonds she said she didn't know why, but just felt that she had to do it, and this was taken by the giver of the testimony as proof of God's goodness; evidently God had violated his sister's free will.

He was then retrenched and given a $17,000 package, with which he staved off bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, at this point I checked my phone and realised I had 3 missed calls from PaRaDoX, so I called him back and went for dinner with him. It had been a miracle that I hadn't heard my phone ringing - it seemed some higher power wanted me to stay on to listen to and critically examine the testimony, but alas, prior fraternal commitments had me bound. In summation, though he talked about rationality, his testimony was not about rationality at all, but rather faith and how God had manipulated his sister's free will into saving him from the bankruptcy that he himself had brought on.