DISQUS

LakeNeuron I actually made reference to that line at least once before ( http://lakeneuron.com/2007/05/14/god-is-not-a-c... ), and there's a story behind it. During the period that I was at ORU, Oral Roberts sometimes used the Coke machine as a metaphor for faith -- when one puts coins in the machine, one expects a Coke to come out. On one particular week, we had a visiting chapel speaker who was even more extreme in his name-it-and-claim-it theology, strongly implying that if you were sick, it was your own fault for not having enough faith. My wing chaplain responded to this chapel service during our normal weekly dorm wing meeting -- which took some cojones, because he was, or at least could have been accused of, disagreeing with the university's founder, president and namesake. It was during that wing meeting that he used the line, "Contrary to what you may have heard, God is not a Coke machine."

I was a freshman at the time, and a year or two ago, when I reconnected with that old wing chaplain online, I told him that his example was a pivotal moment for me, and helped reassure me that I could think for myself within the ORU environment.