Ted Cruz learned at a very early age how to shut his mind off to any thought that contradicted his faith. It is a common problem among Evangelical Christians and other religious fanatics.
I remember when I was a child, a couple in our church said that they had encountered only green lights on their way to church that morning. They interpreted those green lights as a sign from God that they were supposed to to church that day.
They credit their strange concept of God for everything good that happens to them and for everything bad that happens to people they don't like.
So, their basic assumption throughout their lives is that God wants good things for them and that what they want to be true is true because God can make it true.
You really have to understand that there is another step to that. To doubt that something they want to believe is true, that is, to dare to entertain the thought that it might not be true, is somehow demonstrating a lack of faith. It is therefore sort of sinful to express doubt in the illusion with which they have, in their minds, replaced reality.
We wonder sometimes how some of the people who are strong Evangelicals can reconcile their own loose and sometimes aberrant sexual behavior with their religious morality. They do it by believing that they are doing God's will and therefore it must be right. For some of them, the extremists, that is a part of having faith, maybe even of proving their faith. And having faith, believing something that makes no sense whatsoever and that most people would immediately recognize as sheer nonsense as in the case of the green lights coincidence is further proof that they are doing the right thing by having faith.
It is impossible to change their minds because if you try, you push them into a crisis of their faith, and their lives are built on this huge lie that having faith will save them.
What I have taken away from having known many Evangelicals as a child: I like to joke about series of green lights, etc. It is so irrational that I have fun with it. But then, I have faith of my own that is unshakeable, like my certainty that I was born a mortal and will, one day, die. I'm just sure of that. I also have faith that the sun will probably rise tomorrow morning even though I know that the earth revolves, etc. So I have lots of faith left in me. But not like Ted Cruz. In my opinion, his belief in his own illusions verges on insanity. Just watch him. I predict that he will eventually test God (maybe to see whether his own faith is strong enough), do something outrageous and get caught. You have only to list others like him who have, in recent years, followed that familiar pattern. It's called hubris.
I'm all for faith. But without humility, faith is just sound and fury.
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