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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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My memory is that the disabled had people there to help them, and that particular guy was disadvantaged by being there on his own, so he had nobody to keep a space for him or tell him when the waters were disturbed or help him get into the pool:

7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

Rather like the helpers at the baths in Lourdes.

that particular guy

Well, it doesn't say anyone else had help. Just that he would need help to get there first.

Anyway, it's a very odd story, because it sounds like something straight out of local folklore. As I mentioned in my first comment, it barely sounds like Christian theology at all, modulo the hardcoded fact that it's in the New Testament. It sounds more like a story from pagan mythology, where supernatural entities aren't cleanly divided into good and evil, and entities like djinn or fairies often just troll humans for fun. Like it's specifically the blind and lame that are mentioned, being summed by a signal they either cannot see or cannot respond to if they do see it. There's no way that's an accidental detail. And it's very difficult to perform the mental gymnastics for why a member of the traditional Christian angelic hierarchy would engage in trolling the disabled.

It would make a lot more sense if the text said, "But it turns out, this was a fool's hope, and jumping into a pool of water before someone else does not, in fact, heal illness. It wasn't until the man turned away from this false hope and toward Christ he was healed." But it definitely does not say that.