He's A Dead Man

I was working out this morning at the health club and eavesdropping on a conversation between a couple of guys. The middle-aged man said his son was going to start his desert training soon, and would be shipped out to Afghanistan in October. The older man said Afghanistan was a difficult situation, a large country, with a widely varied landscape.

The middle-aged man then mentioned his son was flying out to visit a friend in the states. He’d asked his son what they’d be doing there; his son said they’d be playing paint ball. “He’s a dead man,” the father said, chuckling. “He’s never shot a gun in his life.”

I cringed. The juxtaposition of this man’s proclamation with the earlier discussion about his son shipping out to Afghanistan didn’t sit well with me. It was a knee-jerk, superstitious reaction.

I used to attend churches that preached the Prosperity Gospel, a Christian doctrine espoused by people like Joel Osteen, a photogenic televangelist of the largest church in America, a man who could sell snake oil to his own mother. The Prosperity Gospel claims that if we don’t have health and wealth in our life, it’s because we’re not saying the right things. God spoke the world into existence. Created in the image of God, men and women can do likewise. Positive confession, my friends used to call it.

I left the Prosperity Gospel a long time ago, finding the emphasis on material wealth inconsistent with Christ’s teachings. But I still experience these artifacts from time to time, these moments of being drawn to a positive message, or overly concerned about the negative things somebody says. As a writer, I find it appealing to believe our words have intrinsic power to change the world.

I said a quick prayer for this man’s son, that his father wouldn’t receive bad news in the future.