Who, exactly, intervenes?

Les Jenkins, over at Stupid Evil Bastard[1], comments about the absurdity, at so many levels, of being told to pray to God for help with the stock market. But there’s another level of absurdity that Les didn’t comment on. He quotes from this article about one Cindy Jacobs, on the Christian Bonehead Broadcasting Network program The 700 Club:

In January of this year, Cindy Jacobs was in a worship service when the Lord spoke to her, “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC — the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.”

This word so shook Cindy; she knew she had to call the people of God to converge on New York City the week of October 29 for an emergency prayer rally to cry out against economic collapse in the midst of shaking.

The Lord further said, “October 29 was Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed, and Satan wants to do it again.” We must be proactive in prayer. At the beginning of the year many intercessors began to hear from the Lord that without divine intervention, a major shaking was coming to Wall Street.

As Bill Cosby, as Noah, used to say: “Riiiight.”

Les concentrated, in his critique, on the hypocrisy: whether God cares about money, whether these people are being idolaters... but I’m looking at more fundamental problems with Ms Jacobs’s schizotypal fantasy. To wit:

• God wants this fixed. But the way God approaches fixing it is to have a chat with Ms Jacobs and tell her to hold a prayer session? Wait, who will they be praying to? God, we presume. Bit of a loop here, wot?
• Satan wants to undo the financial system — of course it’s Satan; we should have known. But God, who is all-powerful and can do anything, needs our help to thwart Bush’s Satan’s evil plan. Our help, lowly, powerless mortals that we be. Imagine.
• And what is it that they’ll be praying for? Divine intervention, Ms Jacobs says. Divine intervention by who? Well, God, of course, who else?

So, Ms Jacobs would have us believe that God came to her and said that he wanted to fix the financial mess that Satan is creating, but that the only way he can do that is if she gets a bunch of folk together to ask him to intervene and fix it. I guess there’s some rule that he’s not allowed to do it otherwise. They have to ask really hard, of course, and they have to give money to “the cause” [wink-wink].

Riiiight.

Of course, if there really were a God as Ms Jacobs and her lot describe, and he really did care about fixing things, well, he would just fix them, without all the ridiculous and self-serving mumbo-jumbo.

[It’s also very easy to come around after the problems have surfaced and tell us that God warned you about them months ago. They do that sort of thing all the time, and people continue to be sucked in by it.]
 

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[1] I know I’ve said this a coupla times before, but man, do I love that blog name!