A cascade of problems

 

The funny thing about amputees is that this evidence is obvious to everyone. We have all seen that God ignores the prayers of amputees. This evidence has been plainly visible for centuries.

 

Amputees are not the only ones either. For example:

 

If someone severs their spinal cord in an accident, that person is paralyzed for life. No amount of prayer is going to help. If someone is born with a congenital defect like a cleft palate, God will not repair it through prayer. Surgery is the only option. A genetic disease like Down Syndrome is the same way -- no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.

 

We pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. Will anything happen? Of course not. If prayers like this worked, Christians would have prayed every disease on the planet into extinction centuries ago.

 

It is also easy to find corroborating evidence outside the medical arena. At the global level, we see the evidence every day in many different ways. For example, we all see the millions of children who die every year from the tragic effects of poverty. Unicef puts it this way:

Every year, more than 10 million children die totally preventable deaths. Some are directly caused by illness – pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles – and others are affected by indirect causes such as conflict and HIV/AIDS. Malnutrition, lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation are contributing factors to more than half of these deaths.

 

Jesus is supposed to love all the little children of the world: "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." So we can ask this straightforward question: If children are precious to Jesus, then why is he killing 10 million of them every year with abject poverty? That's 27,000 dead kids every day -- more than 1,000 dead children each hour. If Jesus answers prayers as he promises in the Bible, then why haven't the prayers of billions of people to end world hunger caused Jesus to solve the problem of global poverty?

 

 

We all know that holes like these exist. It is easy to find them. The holes suggest that something very odd is going on.