Cadenhead on Ashley Smith
I’m not sure why, but I really love it when a high-profile media story is revealed to have a big component of myth. I only wish all the people who swallowed the original version got a chance to see the true one, and to process the resulting cognitive dissonance.
Anyway, the latest example to cross my radar, from Rogers Cadenhead: Everyone who uses must converge.
Remember Ashley Smith? She was kidnapped by a nasty hoodlum, but she prayed with him, and he saw the light, and turned himself in. Well, it turns out that along with praying with him, she also shared her crystal meth with him. Funny, I don’t recall that detail being in the uplifting version of the story featured in our pastor’s sermon that Sunday.
October 7th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Holy crap! Smith was on Good Morning America the other day. They had the author of the book talking it up, as well as Ashley Smith talking about the incredible ordeal.
I love it when those bible-thumping morally superior folks turn out to be totally full of shit (which is usually more often than not…moralists tend to have something to hide). It’s equally satisfying when mud is smeared in the face of those sensationalist journalists.
Sensationalist: BEHOLD! THE POWER OF FAITH!
Realist: Actually, dude, that’s the power of crystal meth.
October 7th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
I didn’t pay too much attention to the story and how it was portrayed initially, so I can’t speak with much knowledge regarding it. But it seems that, like anything, people tend to give initial credence to such powerful incidents or dramas especially when they strike a chord in the viewers own personal values and beliefs. Just like this whole Broussard/Dying mother story, it resonated with many people, and especially those who felt the Federal Government/Bush was completely at fault for all the delays and suffering that went on after Katrina. So they were willing to accept a story (and the storyteller) at face value.
Now we have another dramatic story that hit a chord with many people, but especially those with Christian faith, due to the elements in the story that spoke to putting a dangerous situation in God’s hands, the power of prayer and the possible new direction for a person’s life. Ashley is now revealed to be what all Christians are….a sinner. A person with faults and inner demons/temptations. I personally hope that other Christians don’t turn away from her just because her human failings are out in the open. I don’t get the feeling that a huge number of Christians have turned against her. Her story is actually more powerful now. Those who are deriding her are being petty and judgmental. She still did apparently witness to him and engage him in prayer to help turn a deadly situation into something positive. I would only be disappointed if it ever came out that she was never honest about whether her heart was truly into wanting to build her faith and her relationship with God.
By the way, she was on Larry King’s show this week and said she did tell the police about a week afterwards. She was apparently more afraid of her family’s reaction to her reoccurring drug habit.
October 11th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
I never figured someone with as much contempt as you display for religion to be a churchgoer, John.
October 11th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
You are correct, sir. The mention of the pastor’s Sunday sermon was rhetorical. I haven’t attended church regularly since I was 12, and darn few times irregularly after that.
December 31st, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Religious people or anti religious both play off this story in the end is was
a good ending to something that could have been bad. The anti-church
puppets can’t wait to pick fly-crap out of the pepper box while the religious
deny the existence of fly crap.
Both groups lose, The creator wins, all things work for good even fly crap.