Signs and Wonders

Where believers go, these signs shall go with them; they will cast out devils in my name, they will speak in tongues that are strange to them;  they will take up serpents in their hands, and drink poisonous draughts without harm; they will lay their hands upon the sick and make them recover. 
Be sure you do not perform your acts of piety before men, for them to watch; if you do that, you have no title to a reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Those who believe in a literal reading of the Bible must select only those parts of the Bible that suit their purposes. Never do they take the whole Bible literally:
Your heavenly Father will forgive you your transgressions, if you forgive your fellow men theirs; if you do not forgive them, your heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions either.
There is little sign of the wonder of forgiveness in the Reverend O'Connor's tone as he informs Scully and Mulder that Jared Chirp "strayed from the path and was lost to the dark one. I'm sorry for his soul. There ain't much else to say." Nor is there understanding of the New Testament God as revealed by Jesus. As service begins, O'Connor declares, "Our God is a fearsome God." The fundamentalist must always see God thus, even though it flies in the face of the Scripture upon which their faith is allegedly based:
For I was hungry, and you gave me food, thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you brought me home, naked, and you clothed me, sick, and you cared for me, a prisoner, and you came to me.
These are not the words of a God who "ain't much else to say". They are the words of a God who has far more to say than the fundamentalist would wish to hear. Not for O'Connor the forgiving of women who fail his standard of righteousness. Strange indeed must O'Connor find Jesus' attitude to women - willing to speak to them in public (Jn. 4:27); ready to forgive  (Lk. 7:47); even willing to challenge Old Testament teaching (cf. Lv. 20:10) on their behalf (Jn. 8:10).
The twist of 'Signs and Wonders' is that O'Connor , though suspected for most of the episode, is innocent of Jared Chirp and Iris Finster's murders. The more wishy-washy liberal-appearing Reverend Mackey is in fact some sort of snake-monster who reenacts that famous scene from V (1984) in which Mike Donovan espies the alien Diana extending her jaw in order to swallow a small rodent.
It appears the X Files shares the sensibilities of God, preferring 'hot' to 'lukewarm'.
O'Connor is guilty of extremism. He is guilty of depriving his daughter of love and forgiveness - and that is every bit as destructive as Mackey's actual murders. He is also a bloody hypocrite! He can claim to know which side he's on, he can think himself on the side of God, but it is a vastly different God than the God of forgiveness as taught by Jesus in the Gospels:
And now a woman who for twelve years had been troubled with an issue of blood, came up behind him and touched the hem of his cloak; 21 she said to herself, If I can even touch the hem of his cloak, I shall be healed. 22 Jesus turned and caught sight of her; and he said, Have no fear, my daughter, thy faith has brought thee healing.
Fundamentalism of every stripe is in error and not to be called Christian - a name first bestowed on the disciples in Antioch for their great teaching and bringing 'great numbers' into the Church. (cf. Acts 11:21;26)
O'Connor's preaching, juxtaposed alongside Mackey’s, is tempestuous and exciting and so far removed from the teaching style of Jesus as it is possible to be. (cf. Mt. 5) O'Connor has a better insight into the mind of God than does Jesus?
There is a certain serendipity to the sequencing of the episodes differently to their production order. A week after we have LaBonge and the Amazing Maleeni distracting the eye and sleighting the hand, we have O'Connor performing the same trick, only it isn't electronic fund transfers he's after. O'Connor, and his ilk, is more akin to David Copperfield, only instead of the Statue of Liberty, it is Jesus Christ who is made to disappear.

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