Nothing speaks to the veracity
of religion better than a good, solid punch. Cold-cocking someone into having faith or as a
way of getting them to question their non-belief is just what God wants. Otherwise, why would He have said in Exodus 21:19 that “the one who struck the blow will not be held
liable if the other can get up and walk around outside with a staff…”.
People are convinced of a supernatural being’s existence if someone bloodies
their nose or sucker-punches them as proof.
Eric Dammann, a pastor at
Bible Baptist Church in Hasbrouck Heights New Jersey, discovered a surprisingly successful knuckle-ministering technique. Last month his church posted a video
of him bragging before his congregation about leading a young man to Christ by punching him in the chest “as hard as he
could”. The video shows him demonstrating just what kind of blow he dished out
on the unsuspecting youth, a short clip of which you can see at this YouTube address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu7o6l1YAt8
Seems while Eric was
visiting a youth group in Calgary Canada years earlier he met Ben who
he describes as a nice, bright kid, but a smart aleck, which in Eric’s mind
made him dangerous. Throughout Eric’s proselytizing and preaching, the young
man didn't seem to be taking “the Lord serious” [sic]. (What he meant was Ben wasn't taking him seriously.)This apparently enraged
Eric because he said he then “walked over to him and went BAM, punched him in
the chest as hard as I could. I crumpled the kid, I just crumpled him.” He then
claims he leaned over the young man and said “Ben, when are you going to stop
playing games with God?” (He meant stop playing games with him.) and this kid willingly converted right then and there.
I’m sure he did. I’ll
bet Eric doesn’t think the kid did it out of, say, duress or to keep from being slugged again. Instead of God convincing the wayward youth, Eric decided it was up to
him to show Ben that he may be a man of peace with the love of Jesus
inside…it didn't extend to his fist. That’s where his God abided. And that God
spoke to smart-alecky kids by being balled up and slammed into their chests. God loves a cheerful giver.
I wonder what the kid's
parents thought when they heard some American preacher came to their town and, in order to convert their son, he beat him to the ground. Hopefully, Pastor
Dammann has a good lawyer in his congregation because he is going to need him now that he's admitted to child abuse.
I was surprised when
researching this story that there have been numerous recent incidents of ministers who applied Eric's method in their own churches. They just didn't post anything on a webpage or on
Facebook afterward. Many
lawsuits have been filed as a result and there were several photographs of kids with split lips, swollen
faces or black and blue marks on their chests, but none of the preacher-suspects used the
opportunity to say they did it for God. Most admitted they just lost their temper.
For me, this story was not a new one. In the 1950s and '60s my grandfather, a Disciples of Christ
minister, preached about his youthful memories of a tall, brawny and very combative preacher
who used to go into taverns, barrooms and hotels in West Virginia in the late 1800s and challenge men to a fight. He would then beat them senseless
after eliciting a promise from them that, if he won, they had to attend services
while he was at the local church or his tent revival was in town.
Grandfather never seemed to grasp the irony of talking about Jesus who supposedly said ‘Turn the other cheek’, and then in the same sermon
he all but gushed about this preacher slugging and pounding people until they
were streaming blood, covered with bruises (and in some cases needing immediate
medical attention), in order to get them to accept the preacher's religion. Jesus
was always portrayed by my grandfather as the complete antithesis of this supposed man-of-God who was nothing more than a bully
with a bible. Terrorists use fear as a way of achieving their aims, and fear was this preacher’s technique, but instead of using the fear
of hell, he used the fear of his fist and another thrashing. I often wondered
if grandfather secretly wished he could have put the fear of God into people
the same way. It confirmed to me that fear is man-made...and religion is fear.
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