“I just shut my eyes,” said Anthony Oliveri, who barely survived being run over last week, “and said, ‘If this is the way that God wants to do it then I guess that this is the way we’re going to do it.'”
Turns out that was the way God wanted to do it, according to the driver of the car that was running him over. In fact, she said God wanted to do it Himself.
As WANE News (Fort Wayne, Indiana) reported, the woman told police that God was personally responsible for the accident because she was just driving along and “out of nowhere God told her that He would take it from here and she let go of the wheel and let Him take it.” The 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix hit Oliveri’s motorcycle and ran over both bike and man. As he saw the tire approaching his head, Oliveri ironically submitted to the will of the same entity who was (allegedly) behind the wheel at the time.
And maybe that helped, because the wheel missed Oliveri’s head and ran over his body instead. Oliveri suffered serious injuries including multiple broken ribs, but survived. His fiancé was quoted as saying that the bruise on his back was “shaped like angel wings,” but the thing with the wheel frankly seems more helpful. I guess based on the conflicting evidence we have either a case of Old Testament driving or New Testament salvation. I’m not qualified to say which, but the latter seems much more likely.
When I say “Old Testament driving” I’m thinking of the time He told Moses to take a left even though the Canaanites were in the way. (I might not be remembering all the details there.) My recollection is that He delegates much of the kindlier stuff to His son, although the latter also sometimes gets upset with people. See Matthew 21:12; see also “Jesus Told Me to Ram That Car, Says Driver,” Lowering the Bar (Dec. 3, 2008) (quoting man who said Jesus was upset with the other driver because she was “not driving like a Christian”).
As one commentator writes, “[t]here is obviously a torts case to be made here” at least against the car’s human occupant. He cites the Breunig case, in which the defendant also claimed that God had taken control of her car but was still found liable for negligence. That court held that the defendant could still be liable because she knew she could be subject to hallucinations and so should not have been driving at all. (She claimed she believed she could fly “because Batman does it,” which shows the seriousness of her delusions because that dude can at best glide.) In Oliveri’s case, so far I have seen no evidence that the driver had similar issues, just that she was taking Vicodin. But time will tell.