No Athiests in a Foxhole

Perhaps just because my coughs are still trumpet blasts that make it difficult to sleep, but I'm really focusing in on how Jesus wasn't able to do any "mighty deeds" besides healing of a few sick, right there at the end of the story.

There's a song I love that sums it up really well.

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

...No one's laughing at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests 

No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late and their kids not back from that party yet.

- Regina Spektor, "Laughing With" 

The idea of sick people believing, having more reason to look past the weirdness of the prophet being a hometown boy, makes perfect sense to me.  And not only for the self-interest of it.

The chorus of the song reminds us when we DO laugh at the idea of religion.  When the hometown boy's pretensions to prophecy seem just too ridiculous to be true.

But God can be funny at a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke

Or when the crazies say He hates us and they get so red in the face you think they're 'bout to choke

God can be funny when told He'll give you money if you just pray the right way

Or when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus 

Religion has yielded a lot of weirdos.  Not in the "not of this world" variety, although those as well.  Not St. Bernadette in the mud looking like a pig to the girls she went to grammar school with as she digs for the fountain beneath the Virgin Mary's feet.  Not the people who act, bravely, boldly, in the ways no one expects but with righteousness.

Religion has produced a lot of sick cookies and ridiculous people.

Knowing someone their whole life should make it easier to tell the difference.  Tell who is following an unworldly call and who is just not in the same world as the rest of us.  Maybe it makes it harder.  To see them change, to see them become something new.  It's easier to imagine they've gone weird on us than that they've gone holy.

There's something terribly sad about the fact that "nuts" is more believable than "holy."