An evangelical pastor in South Africa clearly felt that the usual tricks to persuade people that their god was acting through them to perform miracles, such a healing them of various ailments, was too tame. So he decided to stage the big one, a resurrection of the dead, where a supposedly dead man suddenly sat up in his coffin in response to prayers.
But the trick was exposed and now the pastor is being sued by funeral directors who say that their businesses were brought into disrepute by being manipulated into being involved in the hoax.
The net result is the opposite of what was intended, with the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities declaring flatly, “There are no such things as miracles … They are made up to try to get money from the hopelessness of our people.”
So what do the pastor and his church say now?
The Sowetan news site reports that the church has since backtracked on its resurrection claim, saying the “dead” man was in fact “already alive” when he was brought to the premises in Kramerville.
Pastor Lukau had only “completed a miracle that God had already started”, Alleluia International Ministries is quoted by The Sowetan as saying.
Oh, isn’t that nice!
“… a miracle that God had already started” … at the moment of conception? Or after an intermediate finding of death that was not valid? Or after a true finding of death that had since been rescinded before the man was brought into his church? I’m pretty sure he’s claiming that third one, because it gives him the wiggle room to say there was a miracle without himself or his church being culpable for a damn thing. Standard religious practice.
A commission for protecting religious communities issued an atheistic statement? That’s fair. Honestly, if religion is going to continue to be part of culture, it should be protected from itself. Its excesses are always leading to own goals.
So “already alive” is the new term for “still alive”. Language evolves so quickly I can barely keep up!