Dr. C Posted September 14, 2019 Share Posted September 14, 2019 If the title should have hinted, if you are going to make posts on this thread demanding proof of faith healing, either in a theological or scientific context, I will have no guilty conscience flagging those types of posts as harassment if I feel attacked in any way. I am generally pretty open minded and don’t want anyone to think that I would be so aggressive on their own threads but since I am making a post about a real life occurrence of feeling personally attacked by real life friends, I am not interested in carrying on the same kind of discourse with total strangers. I am still reeling from how hurt I am in real life so I simply ask to please be considerate of the topic at hand. My father is a pastor with a very unique theological background among which was being one of the medical doctors who would spot check symptoms on claimants of miraculous healings at Benny Hinn crusades in Hinn’s early days when he was working out of his home country of Canada before my father’s entering the ministry himself. So suffice to say, I have a very unusual inside perspective into Benny Hinn’s spiritual and financial dealings. I have mental health issues that i deal with and while my faith precludes belief in God healing people, I also don’t particularly care for people trying to make me feel like an inferior Christian for things I do while under mania or psychosis. To this end I simply broker a conversation to the effect of, I do not have sufficient biblical scholarship to assert a faith healing doctrine. I simply asked my friend to reconsider the character of Benny Hinn as something more than a conman and a charlatan regardless of whether or not he agrees with his doctrine. Whether or not he actually heals people is one thing but I can attest to is that he is certainly sincere in his beliefs and genuinely believe s in what he does. In other words, I maintain that someone being sincere does not equate with being right here. I left it open-ended to the possibility of him being sincere and sincerely wrong. The issue I take, as someone who had to endure his own father being sued by my aunt when she tried to seize ministry assets for herself under the guise of fraud accusations and WON because the accounting books of his church finances got her laughed out of court by the end of it, Is very simply that one should tread very carefully when one accuses someone of money fraud and (though this was not said in conversation) in particular because of the reality of anti-semitism when someone accuses a Jew of shady monetary dealings. His response, and that of his friend/tenant renting his room was unusually vicious coming from someone I have been friends with for years. There was a lot of demand for proof of faith healing and his tenant an amputee demanding testimonials of divinely restored limbs among other things. The original premise of the discussion was character of an individual and not theology but it got dragged that way. It is one thing if someone such as yourself who does not know me hears my take and doesn’t care about my opinion because we have no relationship whatsoever outside of what tenuous one we may have here as fellow Fire Emblem fans. But when your best friend rejects the input of someone that would not do wrong by them because of their own biases and discounts the hardships their friend’s family has been through and disregards how close accusations like the ones lobbied at Hinn hit close to home, it kind of hurts. Beyond that was some very blatant dishonesty on the part of his tenant which took the conversation in a toxic direction that made my skin crawl. I really want to give some benefit of the doubt here but it’s hard to overlook how much he acted like the conversation my friend literally walked in on never actually happened and how that was weaponized to make me look more foolish without proper context. I really don’t know what to do or say here so I figured that Id just post what’s been troubling me and ask how I should handle this as well as... Was I straw manned? Because it certainly feels like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted September 16, 2019 Share Posted September 16, 2019 I. . .have no idea. Because I honestly can't picture the situation in my head. It might help to use fake names for the various people (so your dad is "Sigurd" or something). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. C Posted September 16, 2019 Author Share Posted September 16, 2019 3 hours ago, eclipse said: I. . .have no idea. Because I honestly can't picture the situation in my head. It might help to use fake names for the various people (so your dad is "Sigurd" or something). Well the issue seems to have resolved itself. i talked with my friend but it took getting it out there to get to that point. Appreciate the reply all the same! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted September 16, 2019 Share Posted September 16, 2019 Alright. I'll lock this, then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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