Charismagic

Optimus Prime’s sister-in-law, Starscream, is getting married this spring. I used to have a crush on her (like every female I mention in here, it seems… I have a crush on every girl…) but Prime says I would no longer. Apparently, she is very very evangelical now. Into the whole Blessings thing. Not the Toronto kind, the self-help get-rich kind. He says she believes that if you pray a certain way for a certain amount of time, God will bring you blessings. Never mind trials and tribulations. Never mind the sick and the hungry. God just wants to bless people who pray the right way with material goods. That sounds about right.

But this brought up a deeper issue. Prime feels that the whole Charismatic movement is close to woo-loo-loo magic bullshit. Just like all “supernatural” experiences.

See, Prime has theory: if God exists, there is no reason for Him/Her/It to interact with human kind. God either created the world in such a way that it is already exactly as He (excuse my lapse into Pentecostal notions for the sake of brevity) wants it to be. That any interaction with human beings is more like a beacon God has set up. It send out the same message over again, and if we’re lucky, we catch bits and pieces from time to time. God doesn’t care where you go or what you do specifically. She (mixing it up) just knows the general guidelines for the best way to live since It created the Universe in the first place.

Or, Prime’s other theory is that God is not all powerful, and is someway prevented from intervening with the everyday life of human beings. This means that God is restricted by some higher law that He didn’t create. Raises a whole new series of interesting questions.

I'm not sure I buy either of Optimus Prime's theories, but I'm a lot closer to accepting them than I am to the idea of a God who sends encoded messages to people through animal noises or different languages.