Tony Campolo visited my Australian church in August (I still go because of my wife). It wasn't until the last couple of weeks that I realised he's quite a famous pastor in America. I thought I should share this story as another example of how many prominent Christians don't value the truth.

Tony was getting to the end of his sermon about loving neighbours and started to tell a story. He said that he was visiting London one day and was taking the subway. Two men were sitting opposite him on the train. One of them began to have a seizure. The other held him gently and put him the recovery position until the seizure passed. The carer apologised to Tony, saying that his friend had regular seizures ever since they had fought in Vietnam together, and the friend had saved his life pulling him out of a helicopter crash, but was injured in the process which caused his seizures. The carer now goes with the man wherever he needs to to make sure that he is alright and to repay his life debt to him. Tony uses this story of the men he met as an illustration of how our love for others should be so committed or something else Christianey.

Anyway, my BS meter is going off (I've been tuning it over the past few years). I'm pretty sure I've heard a different pastor use a very similar story before. Sure enough, after a bit of googling, I find a source for the story. A book of sermon illustrations has almost the exact same story in it, except this one is set in NY, and the friend dragged his carer back to safety after being caught behind enemy lines in Vietnam. All the seizure stuff was the same.

I wouldn't have had a problem with this if Tony had said that it was just a story or parable to illustrate the point, but of course that's not good enough for him and his audience. He has to sell it better than that, so he knowingly lies to hundreds of people about him actually meeting these two men and it being a real story! This blatant disregard for truth frustrates me so much. If the Christian message was true, you wouldn't need to invent stories and deceive church-goers to try and sell people on it.

I'm curious if anyone else has heard a form of this story before. I think it may be one of those folklore stories that gets passed around preachers every now and then. If you know any other stories that get passed around, share them too.

Here's the book where he got the story from: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rUTxZoHx5WEC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=seizures vietnam train story&source=bl&ots=iOfjbZxODj&sig=3nT9zwuPXlEPkbcs3Q2kmXJLGTk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiV0POmsYrdAhWJd94KHR1LCa0Q6AEwEnoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=seizures vietnam train story&f=false