a brilliant analogy
November 29, 2007 by leavingeden
I read things on Christianity Today quite frequently (old habits). This is the best thing I’ve read in awhile. The author is writing about his daughter, who had leukemia and lived because of blood transfusions:
I asked, Why, God? Why is this happening to her? She loves You so much. Where are You?
Then I sensed in my spirit a still, small voice saying: “Here I am, Dean. Here I am.” My eyes focused to the right of her bed. The moon coming in the window illuminated the iv pole, casting the shadow of a huge cross on the wall. “Here I am, Dean.” On the pole was a bag of blood.
In that instant, I thought of the life-giving blood that poured out of Jesus as He hung on the cross. Later I wondered about His blood type. Surely He was O-negative, the universal donor. That blood can save anyone.
Through that long night, as God comforted me, I thought about the three main components of blood—red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets—and considered how they each represent Him.
Red blood cells are like God the Father, the author of life. They bring oxygen, the breath of life, to every cell in our body. White blood cells are like God the Son, our advocate and defender. They fight against that which infects us. Platelets are like God the Holy Spirit, our healer. They are sticky cells that rush to the site when we are cut and form a clot that closes the wound and helps us heal.
I gasped, astonished to see the Trinity so clearly revealed in the blood.
The rest of the article isn’t that bad. But seriously, What?
One of the wonderful things I always loved about being jewish was the gematria -
(disclaimer - i’m a secular/humanist/atheist/name-it-whatever jew now)
basically, the idea was to try to find numerical interpretations of the torah that no one else had come up with in order to answer questions that were tough in nature. Most of this was done by VERY orthodox rabbis and their crew, and it is portrayed brilliantly in the book The Chosen, by Chaim Potok (an incredible read). Most of the people doing this recognized it as an interesting game which helped them to learn better the more obscure aspects of the Torah or to better understand the intent behind some very strange passages, but there were always some who would latch on and find meaning anywhere possible.
My point… uh…
OH!
People look for meaning and patterns in places where it just doesn’t belong, sometimes - but that’s a simple fact of how religion reinforces itself. I think that the story, as posted, was a heartwarming one, also - think about if it had starred, say, a christian who refused medical treatment for his kid based on ‘gods will’. The guy was under a lot of stress, and he found comfort in his beliefs. I can’t fault him for needing to do that, even if I can’t agree with him.
links-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science