A news report in my local newspaper had a headline that must have sent joy through Christians always on the lookout for signs that god exists. It said “Religious painting stops bullet from ripping through home on Cleveland’s East Side.”
The story that followed was a familiar one about someone claiming that their life was saved by a religious icon.
A religious painting stopped a stray bullet from ripping through a home and hitting two people.
…The woman said that she was sitting on the living room couch with her husband when they heard a gunshot come through the corner of the home and into the painting.
“It was like divine intervention or something,” she said.
So far, so good. Two people felt that they had been saved from death or serious injury by a fortuitous event. The fact that the object in question had a religious aspect to it could usually be expected to produce a flood of religious fervor and people making pilgrimages to the site to see this miracle-working painting.
Except there’s a problem. The religious painting in question was not that of Jesus or the Virgin Mary but that of a man reading the Koran so I am not sure how Christians are going to handle it.
So far no comments on the news story and it’s already been there a couple of days. Maybe the usual suspects are just going to ignore it?
The icon now has lead in its paint. Dispose of it carefully!
Speculative hypothesis, but plausible.
Easy enough to check Christian channels online — which I haven’t.
Easy. It’s a painting of a man, not a religious painting, and conflating the two senses is equivocation.
@Tabby #1: That site has the strangest format -- it seems that if you wish to leave a comment, it has to be on a generic page that covers all the crime stories. Going there reveals a few relevant comments, but they are mixed in with comments on other stories, too, so everything is just a random mish-mash.
raym,
You are right. That Cleveland.com site is one of the worst news sites I have seen.
This is the work of Iblis!