Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were in town this week for a prayer breakfast for 1800. They’re the two young Christian women from Texas who were arrested in August by the Taliban and held for 3 months for trying to spread Christianity in Afghanistan.
Back in November when the two were released, Mercer said: “It was God who put us in prison. It was not the Taliban. He used them for His greater purpose. Now I am seeing more of what that purpose is.” Both women now give God the glory for their dramatic rescue, calling it a “modern-day miracle.”
By this logic, the two women should also have said, “It was God who sent those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was His way of mobilizing the armed forces in order to get us out of prison. A few thousand people had to die for us, but the Lord works in ways that we don’t always understand.”
And as for the modern-day miracle of their rescue? Why not also say, “We don’t understand why God would not rescue Mychal Judge, chaplain of the NYFD and save us, but we’re going to assume that it’s because we can do a lot more good in the world than he. So we’ve signed on with The Ambassador talent agency to spread the word, something Mychal Judge probably never thought of doing. Doing God’s work one person at a time is just not efficient in this day and age.”
I know these women mean well, but then, all missionaries do.
Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not. – Oscar Wilde
The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages — as if the savages weren’t dangerous enough already. – Edward Abbey
Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it. – Charles Dickens