The said post received thousands of engagements (likes, shares, comments), since it appeared to vindicate the surfer’s unwavering faith in Jesus, however something was not quite adding up for me despite being a huge supporter and promoter of such remarkable feats achieved by Christians to defy all odds stacked up against them by the world against their faith in Jesus.
It was probably the fact that the other post said the Brazilian surfer who was told to remove the image of Jesus walked away from the competition as a result, which contradicted the idea that he still later competed, even if he broke the Olympic record in the process and later attributed the feat to Christ.
That led to digging deeper to seek the name and identity of the surfer that was told to remove the image of Jesus from his surfboard to confirm that indeed it was the same surfer that also broke the surfing record.
It was after doing so that i discovered that although they were both Brazilian surfers and both gold medal hopefuls for their nation, they were different persons but only national teammates.
While the surfer asked to remove Jesus from board is Joao Chianca, the one who broke the record is Gabriel Medina.
So it was only after I had gotten that fact right about the story that I shared it here:
So that effort to verify the story regardless helped me not to join in the spread of the false information, that it was the same Brazilian surfer who was told to remove the image of Jesus from his board, that was behind the record breaking feat and also the most iconic photo of the Olympics, even though that would have been more appealing.
It’s only the truth that can make people free, never lies.
