Like The Fella Once Said, "Ain't That a Kick In the Head?"

In case you're a better person than I and don't know, Todd Bentley is a Canadian faith healer in Florida.

Hmm.

I don't like the phrase "faith healer". I don't think he heals by faith or heals faith so it may be more appropriate to call him a belly kicker.

Yes, that makes more sense in light of what he does. Or did. He would attempt to heal people by kicking or kneeing them in the stomach. No... not heal people. He would attempt to extract money from naive and desperate people by kicking them in the gut. That's not really healing. So maybe he should be called a money kneer.*

Anyway, now he is separating from his wife and is no longer suited to his ministry, which if you remember, was kicking people in the belly.

I think it's appropriate to give someone time to heal their marriage. It's appropriate to give someone rest from their ministry, especially if that ministry is a strain on their marriage. Someone cheating on their spouse has other concerns than ministry. There are all kinds of reasons why he ought to take a break from his work. The greatest is, he kicks people in the belly.

Some of the Dominionist/Reconstructionist "thinkers" with which I punish myself are ecstatic about Todd Bentley's failure. It proves he is a false prophet and teacher- something like, "See, he can't keep his marriage together, the Bible says he ought to, his belly-kicking can't be of the Lord."

That's strange. It's difficult to not see it all as glee over his tragedy, but then I see his kicking people in the belly as evidence that his belly-kicking is not of the Lord, so I'm not looking for evidence that he's wrong... or nuts. So to suddenly focus on him again (I'd first learned of him when the Dominionist/Reconstructionists were up in arms over his kicking a person who had colon cancer) at this time seems like adding insult to injury. (I'd have said "kicking him while he's down", but somebody already used that joke.) But if I were looking for evidence against him or a way to prove he was wrong, well I suppose I could use something like his marital problems to do so. But then, I would be a very different person if I thought I could look for something like evidence to do something like prove Todd Bentley is a crazy person to people who do not think he is a crazy person already.

It seems a silly game to me. Like I said, I see his kicking people in the belly as evidence that he is wrong and crazy. I don't look for a Bible verse to say:
"I have brought upon them toward the belly of the sick, a healer.
I have caused him to kick upon it suddenly.
Verily it shall be for their healing and they will know I am the LORD."
or contrarily:
"Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them,
Neither shalt thou take of the knee and strike it on the belly
It shall be an abomination and the knee that striketh shall bear its iniquity."
And I'm doing us a favor by being more specific about things then we generally are when we say, "The Bible says bleh..." about some such or other. But even if these verses did exist (which they do, as you can see) I still wouldn't say that that alone says enough to tell us whether we ought to kick someone in the belly to heal them or not, though let's not beat a dead horse.

Imagine you were on one side or other of this fight. I don't mean in the way you probably know about it now; as a casual outsider you are not in this fight and it's easy to say whatever it is you say about it. Imagine you are in this. The complex web of commitments and concerns, belief, knowledge, possibility, life and all would make you such that you might save your money to make the trip, drive who knows how many miles- or probably more likely, convince a loved one to drive, stand among the crowd suffering the pain of whatever debilitating condition you have, waiting your turn to be kicked in the belly, in front of a crowd of thousands, by Todd Bentley.

Or not.

If there were a Bible verse that spoke to the issue (which I already pointed out, there is) you would read it in such a way that resonated with who you are, whoever that might be.

But here we have the Dominionist/Reconstructionists offering instruction to whom? Who will read their treatises and say, "You know, I was realy into Todd Bentley, and I was all feeling bad for him and his wife then I found out about their marital problems, and I was hoping his ministry wouldn't suffer too much, and I was hoping to get the chance to go to Lakeland this weekend and have him kick the diabetes right from my belly, but he's gone. And now that I read this article by Janet Folger... I'm convinced all that was a mistake."?

It's not that we can't learn from this; maybe we just did.

* It seems like kneer, one who knees, should be spelled with three es because words like sneer, beer, etc. are one syllable words and kneer should be two... Kne-er or Knee-er? I need a ruling on this. Wait, one who sees is a seer. Okay, kneer it is.