Warm sun, cool breeze, and suspiciously well-timed gust leave man wondering whether recent arguments with cage-stage Calvinists were “unfortunately onto something.”
PORTLAND, OR — Local internet atheist Derek Mallory began reconsidering Christianity Saturday after a gust of wind blew his fedora into a municipal duck pond during what he called a “deeply reluctant but medically necessary touch-grass excursion.”
Mallory had reportedly spent the prior 11 years online explaining that Christianity was mythology for people unable to face reality. But when his fedora sailed off his head, witnesses said he was struck by a sudden, unfamiliar awareness of the warm sun on his face, the cool wind in his hair, and the possibility that the universe might be more than “atoms bumping into other atoms until someone invents brunch.”
“I had never really felt wind through my hair before,” Mallory said. “Not like that. The sun was warm. The breeze was cool. There were trees, and birds, and clouds, and I suddenly thought, ‘Okay, fine. Maybe the Christians are not completely insane.’”
Romans 1 teaches that God’s eternal power and divine nature are evident in what has been made, though people suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness.
Mallory said the incident became especially troubling because he had spent the previous week arguing online with several cage-stage Calvinists, each of whom had assured him that if God intended to save him, “there was literally nothing he could do about it.”
“I thought they were unbearable,” he said. “They kept saying things like, ‘Bro, you are not outside God’s decree,’ and sending me memes of Charles Spurgeon with laser eyes. Then this gust of wind removes the single most important item in my personal identity and deposits it in a pond. I’m not saying it was irresistible grace. But I am saying it was extremely on-brand.”
The sudden loss of the fedora appeared to leave Mallory temporarily without the ability to call God “sky daddy,” dismiss Pascal’s Wager, or explain why moral outrage was objectively binding in a purposeless universe.
“Without the hat, he looked around like a normal human being,” said roommate Kyle Benson. “He kept saying, ‘Why is everything so beautiful?’ I told him it was a park. He said, ‘No, I mean—why is there a park?’ Then he got very quiet.”
The internet stereotype linking fedoras to a certain aggressively atheist, self-consciously rational online persona has persisted for years, especially after the “Tips Fedora” meme circulated widely in the early 2010s.
Mallory has not yet joined a church, but says he has begun reading the Gospel of John “for entirely investigative reasons” and has stopped responding to every Christian post with a Richard Dawkins quote.
“I am not a Calvinist,” he said, visibly shaken. “I just think it is odd that the wind knew exactly where my hat was. And also, I may attend church this Sunday. Strictly to evaluate the evidence.”
At press time, Mallory had placed his ruined fedora in a trash bag labeled “Former Worldview,” while three cage-stage Calvinists were already arguing in his comments over whether the gust constituted common grace, effectual calling, or “a totally based providence event.”
Comments
Post a Comment