Last week teenager Alex Malarkey....... yes Malarkey, no giggling please, admitted that he lied about his near death experience brought on by a traffic accident, leaving him a paraplegic and documented in the book he co-authored with his father, Kevin, titled The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, A True Story. In an open letter to Christian bookstores and posted on The Pulpit and the Pen website Alex wrote that at the time he made his claims to his father and others he had never read the bible. He stated "People have profited from lies and continue to.". This bit of soul cleansing came eleven years after his accident, nearly five years after his book was published, over one million copies of his book sold and a 2010 made for TV movie. Alex's mother, Beth Malarkey, started rebuking the story in 2012 saying that the story is full of inaccuracies, not biblically sound and is both painful and puzzling to watch the book still selling. This all stated by her after divorcing Alex's father and publicly claiming that she hasn't received any revenue from the book or the movie to pay for Alex's care. Sounds like a good, wholesome, Christian family to me.
Normally I take this this kind of dogma with a grain of salt. Heard one near death experience, you pretty much heard them all. This time, however, there are a few circumstances that stand out from the incorporeal norm. First of all, at the time of the accident Alex was six years old and after regaining conciseness from a coma he made these claims to his family. Now I have no problem with the stories Alex told, I have a six year old myself and let me say, conservatively, she can tell some whoppers that would put Jon Lovits to shame. Yeaaaaah....that's the ticket! All without the excuse of being in a coma. His father, on the other hand, is different kind of scourge all together. The money from the book and movie is the least of his transgressions towards his family. What this poor excuse of fraternal material with delusions of self-righteousness did was far worse than stiff his wife and kids. Instead of heartfully acknowledging and discretely dismissing his sons flights of fantasy brought on by his coma as most parents would do, this particular kind of muck annoying the bottom of my shoe saw dollar signs and decided to cash in.
Now this kind of thing is by no means anything new on the heavenly hereafter scene. Who could ever forget in 1980, as he was building his City of Faith Hospital, Oral Roberts saw his 900 foot Jesus appear before him in what he took as a sign from above that his work on earth was held in favor by the holy father. Then, in 1983, he was told by Jesus that he was appointed by god to find the cure for cancer. And yet again, in 1986, (holy messages seem to come in threes, three years apart, three messages) as he moved up the divine social ladder, he was told directly by god himself that he would be called home within one year if he didn't raise 8 million dollars to promote god's medical presence on earth. Really?.... God needs a publicist? And cash? Why do gods always need money? On several occasions during his God's Medical Miracle Tour "86" Oral stated that god had set his deadline at March 1st 1987, but gave him a 30 day extension when he couldn't scrape up all the dough. As ridiculous as this all sounds, what's even more ridiculous is that god asked for 8 million and his followers sent him 9.1 million. Wait..... what? That's right, people actually believed what he claimed and sent him little Jimmy's and/or Jennie's college funds. Now that's publicity your devil bashing dollar can't buy..... oh, wait a minute, I guess it can.
What I can't figure out in all of this is why so many god fearing Christians feel the constant need to verify the very thing they are supposed to believe in without question in the first place. And why when they find what looks to them as some kind of pearly gates proof they turn to someone like me and say the equivalent of "See.... look at this. I told you! Here's the proof.". Proof? Why do they need proof? When I was growing up a good Roman Catholic boy, (the only one of three siblings to confirm, if you can believe that) I was told on numerous occasions that the existence of god needed no proof. Absolutely no verification whatsoever. I was instructed every time I had questioned if god or heaven existed that I had to take a "leap of faith". From what I see around me, it seems that some of the bible thumpers that took that leap fell a little short of their mark. In my opinion, if you need some kind of evidence to validate your beliefs, your faith was in question from the beginning. Hand in hand, if you need religion to point your moral compass in the correct direction, religion will not be able to help you.
Alex Malarkey and his mother did offer a solution to our faith questioning sticky wicket. They suggest to the people who were hoodwinked by his book that "They should read the bible, which is enough. The bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible". Now I know that Alex is only 16, handicapped and by no means do I want to criticize him, but I know, if not only due to his condition, that his mother helped if not completely wrote his statement. With that being stated, here is my problem. The bible was written by man. Not only was it penned by man, it was composed in the worst way possible. It was written with stories that were handed down from generation to generation for what our best historians believe was at least 150 years. Theologians have also discovered and disclosed that the stories in the bible were hand picked and any gospel that presented either Jesus or God in anything but a divine light were conveniently left out. Even the modern Catholic church acknowledges the existence of the devil and demons but now looks upon them as facets of the human psyche. Why then do religions constantly use the bible as their go to reference? The answer I most typically get from men and women of the cloth is that its all they have to go on. This statement is true to a point. The non-edited statement is a little bit closer to the truth. It's the only thing they have to go on that's readily accepted by most religions. Publications such as The Good News Bible and The New American Bible which contain other gospels that were left out of the King James version are readily dismissed as non-validated scripture. Non-validated by who? Wouldn't someone seeking enlightenment from on high want to know everything and anything that was available on the subject? Why is it that most people do more research on the purchase of a car than they do before they put all their immortal eggs in one all knowing basket? I suppose it's because the car would take something a little more tangible from them..... cash. That's the beautiful and convenient thing about most religions. If your wrong in your belief, God forgives and accepts you anyway. Buy the wrong car you get stuck with a lemon, a monthly payment and four grand in depreciation. Strictly an observation. If you'll excuse me, someone just emailed me about the bridge I'm selling.
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