Electricity and water don’t mix. Even when you’re doing the Lord’s work.
I had heard about the death of Kyle Lake over the weekend. Lake, a pastor at University Baptist in Waco, and one of the contributors to the emergent church movment, was electrocuted when he grabbed a microphone while standing in a baptismal.
Of course I’m sympathetic to his family, friends, and church, and the 800 people who watched him die. It’s a tragic loss. But lets face it: He was standing in water and he grabbed an electrical device. Am I the only one who recognizes the utter stupidity in this? I would never touch a mic if I were hip-deep in water. I’ve been shocked too many times to not have a solid respect for electricity. Lake obviously didn’t think a thing about it, and… well, sometimes we can teach people the most through our mistakes.
I remember in the early days of Macintosh computers, when the new computers had their on-switch built into the keyboard. It was a good idea; previously the on-switch was in the back of the computer, which makes no practical sense. But the trouble with those first computers is they weren’t well-grounded. One fellow employee accidentally spilled a Pepsi into the keyboard and the resulting fireworks display was spectacular… and ruined the computer, blew out the circuit breaker, and shut down every computer in that section of the building.
This was in the days before we’d heard of “surge protectors” for the computers. So not a single computer was plugged into any such thing. When we got the power back on, they worked just fine; the only data lost was the stuff people had been working on when the Pepsi got spilled. So I suspect the whole surge protector deal is a giant scam, especially since if a spike is powerful enough (like a lightning strike) that computer’s getting fried, surge protector or no surge protector.
Microphones, of course, have no surge protector.
Christianity Today has posted, ironically enough, an except from Lake’s book on God’s will in which he discusses how “everything happens for a reason” is a misinterpretation of Paul’s statement, “We know that everything works together for good—for those who love God, those called for his purpose.” [Ro 8.28] People like to drop off that second clause and forget that stuff happens for our benefit. But you can read his except yourself.