Prayer for the Inevitable

I suppose one way to demonstrate that prayer works is to pray for the inevitable, and then when it happens say, “See.  God answers prayers.”

In addition to a broken arm I learned that my Mom has stage 4 pancreatic cancer and more cancer in her lungs and liver.  So, shall I pray and ask God to simply remove all the cancers, restore her broken arm, and reduce her age from 89 to 69?  Nope.  No point in such prayers.  Those prayers would be asking God for a miracle, a biological miracle.  Seems God is only willing to do that when it serves his/her interests as in suspending the laws of biology so that a virgin got pregnant and marketing Jesus’s powers.  Mom will die, and will die soon.  Prayers others have offered in her behalf have been that “she passes without pain” and support for the family in our grief.

We will grieve.  No way around that.  The process has begun.  What would support for us in grief look like?  The end of grief?  No, that somehow discounts our love for Mom.  Less grief?  How does one measure level of grief?  If I bear the grief and life goes on is that the work of God or is that the fact that I know grief, I know it is coming, I will find things to celebrate about her life in her death.  That is my doing, not God’s.

And comfort her in her death?  If God did that why would we need Hospice?  Why would we need powerful pain killing drugs?  No, God is not going to comfort her in her death.  Modern medicine and Medicare funded support services will do that.  She will not suffer because we will make sure she has the right drugs, not the right God.

So, if Mom is going to die, she is going to die painlessly, our family will grieve as we need to, what in the world shall we pray to God for?  All these things are inevitable.  Prayer for the inevitable is a total waste of time and mockery of belief.  Prayer for a miracle is pointless as those do not really happen.  If they did, everyone would believe. 

I know.  God has a plan we are not privy to.  Part of the plan is very clear:  everyone dies.  What a great plan!  Wish I had come up with that.  So, I guess cancer is part of God’s plan too, just like car wrecks, handgun deaths, heart attacks, strokes, war, plagues, etc.  All those things are necessary if the plan is to create a life form that must die.  So, why create life that will end?  If there is a God he/she clearly does not operate in the realm of logic and reason which evidently he/she endowed us to have.  Makes so much sense.

Thanks for your prayers.

Missing Church

I did not go to church Sunday, the first day of the New Year.  I simply could not go.  I could not stand and recite a creed I no longer believe.  I could not participate in a sacrament that grows ever more ludicrous and barbarian to me.  I could not hear one more sermon based on a book of fantasies.  I just couldn’t in good conscience go to church.

And yet, I am sad.  I miss being there.  It is the people I miss.  The men and women and boys and girls whom I only see on Sundays.  They are good, likeable people, though I believe they talk to imaginary friends and live in never-never land.  I miss the music.  I love Christmas carols even if the Christmas story has become a fairy tale to me.  I miss singing in the choir.  I miss my friends.  And in many ways I miss the routine, the liturgy.  I love to sing the Doxology, I just do not believe the words anymore.  I love to sing the Gloria Patria but do not believe the words anymore.  When I go, I go to sing.

And singing what I do not believe is not a problem for me.  I sing,” Up on the Housetop” and “Here Comes Santa Clause” and “I am a Rock, I am an Island”, etc., etc.  It is the music, not the belief system that I endorse.  If I could only sing music that fits with my belief system I would have to sacrifice most of Bach and Beethoven and Wesley choral music.  I would have to sacrifice Christmas carols.  I would have to sacrifice most patriotic music.  I would have to sacrifice many tunes from Broadway musicals.  On and on.  I believe it is OK to sing songs with fantasy lyrics or lyrics that are based on a false belief system.  I am not endorsing the belief system, I am singing the music.

If members of the church knew I had lost my faith would they ask me to leave?  Would they pray for me?  Would they grow hostile?  I am not sure.  Some would be angry.  Some would be scared.  Some would be supportive.  I simply do not know. 

But until I can sing again I will not go.

Santa or Jesus?

Believe! I see a lot of T-shirts and sweaters this time of year with that imperative statement.  And looking at the color, the supportive symbolism, etc., it seems to me that the thing to be believed is Santa Clause.  We adults look at each other, smile and wink.  We know Santa is not real.  (Or, if you did not know I am sorry to be the one to deliver such truth.)  We know we promote this notion for our kids.  We want our kids to believe in Santa.

We very well may want our kids to believe in Jesus as well.  And I see a number of declarative statements around about the reason for the season, as though there is something else going on at this time of year other than Santa.

But I am fascinated by adult efforts to promote both belief systems, Santa and Jesus.  I think we do a better job with Santa than we do with Jesus. 

For kids, there is tangible evidence of Santa.  We write letters to him and sometimes he responds.  We make lists of wants, wishes and needs for him and sometimes we receive those gifts.  We set out cookies, milk and a carrot and in the morning they are eaten or bitten.  We have Santa surrogates all over the place, ringing bells, posing in malls, attending parties, etc.  There are umpteen movies about him.  We know where he lives, we know what he does all year, we know who works for him, and we know his mode of transportation.  Santa has a naughty and nice list, but the consequences of being on the naughty list lasts only one year and are not painful.  Yes, there appears to be concrete evidence to a kid that Santa is real.

To my knowledge parents do not encourage kids to write letters to Jesus.  We do not encourage them to set out a baby bottle with formula, or even a pacifier for the baby Jesus.  We do not see people dressed as Jesus walking around spreading good cheer.  We make few movies about him, and none of them are comedies.  We do not know where he lives and we do not know for sure what transportation device he uses.  We tell our kids to pray, but the frequency of answered prayer is less than the frequency of gifts resulting from a letter to Santa.  We tell our kids that Jesus has a naughty and nice list too, but the consequences are eternal damnation or eternal life depending on which list you are on.  Jesus is less predictable and scarier.

And then at some point we learn that our parents lied to us.  There really is no Santa.  He is an idea, a symbol.  He is not tangible.  He is make-believe.  But we never have the same discussion about Jesus with our kids.  Is he real?  Is he tangible? 

Seems to me that if I were a kid again I would believe in Santa.  I’m not so sure about Jesus.  Is Jesus the same kind of make-believe entity like Santa, or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny?  How would I know?  Oh I know.  There is evidence for Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and very little evidence of Jesus.  OK.  I know which of these are likely to be real and which are likely to be just imaginary friends.  I believe.

Thanks to Whom?

Ah, Thanksgiving.  Our officially recognized day to celebrate gluttony in a land full of obesity.  Go figure.

But it is also a day we are to stop and give thanks for what we have.  But this year I wonder to whom I should give such thanks?  I have always given thanks to God for my many blessings, until it occurs to me that so many others were denied these blessings.  Why is that?

I was born a white male, speaking English, in the USA, to two educated parents.  I never worried about having food to eat or clothes to wear.  I was provided a great education.  There were no doors closed to me based on my birth characteristics.  For the most part, it appears I was born to be a conservative Republican.

But my circumstances are so rare.  Billions are born into poverty with no food, terrible shelter, one set of clothes, no clean water, no chance of escape from their circumstance because they are in a poverty zone, or a class system zone, or a racial discrimination zone.  How do I explain the millions who were born as I was born to the billions who were not?

Should I simply be grateful for the laws of chance, for the random event that determined that I was very, very lucky?  Should I thank God?  Then I must ask if God loves us all, why does He apparently punish most of us at birth?  Is this part of His plan?  If so, why such a cruel plan?  I could build a better case for a God who hates us and wants to punish us and make us miserable and sick than I can build a case for a loving, forgiving, personal God.  The data is pretty clear.

Most amazing to me is that God tolerates those who are born into such wealth who take the stand that they somehow deserve their wealth and comfort and are justified in politically defending such wealth.  Conservatives fight to end entitlements for the poor and needy.  And that is in this country.  Talk about spending some of our wealth elsewhere on the globe to help the starving and the sick and conservatives will rise up and quash any such humanitarian notion.  If there is a God and a devil it has always appeared to me that conservatives do the devil’s work while liberals attempt to do God’s work. 

Shall I be grateful to a god who designed us to live on a planet where only 15% is habitable by humans?  Why would a loving creator place his creation in such a place?  Shall I be grateful to a god who seems to reward the attributes of birth rather than the attributes of performance?  Shall I be grateful to a god that provides our nation with enough food that we can all grow fat while allowing about 20,000 children to die of starvation each and every day?  Shall I be grateful to a god who allows random chance to secure our fate?  If so, what is the purpose of prayer and worship?

Nope, this year for Thanksgiving I shall simply be grateful for the random chance that placed me where I am.  If God did this for me I must assume he did the opposite for all the other miserable, starving, sick, homeless people on the planet.  If that is true, then God is considerably meaner to humans than he is wonderful.  I could not worship such a god.

The Miracle Myth

There is a 7 year old Illinois girl battling a rare form of leukemia who has posted a request for prayers on Facebook.  After modern medical science has taken its best shot at removing the disease, what do you think will happen?  I think she is going to die of her leukemia.  I think no matter how many prayer warriors and prayer lists and individuals on their knees begging God for succor, she is going to die.  Soon.

And that is very sad.  More so because she has been given hope of divine intervention in her diseased state, a hope that is not grounded in reality.  Yes, there are people who pray to be cured who are, and pray to survive who do so.  There are many more who pray for the same thing and die.  If God chooses to save some and not others, what kind of God is that?  So, it seems to me it must be random.  Some survive, some don’t.  Some claim miracles, others die.  And if God is not as trustworthy as gravity in that he works everywhere, all the time, with everyone on the planet, then how can we trust in the Lord?  When this little girl dies praying to be cured she has been subjected to one of the great myths of religion:  God hears our prayers and acts on those prayers.  If that is true, God has a lot, I mean a lot, of explaining to do regarding those prayers he has chosen to ignore.  And if it is God’s plan that this girl dies, what kind of God is that?

If this little girl were my daughter and I had infinite power I would cure her.  And we are told we are all God’s children.  But could we expect such a cure from a God who sent his son to die?  Supposedly, Jesus cured folks prior to his death.  If I could cure, I would.  Am I a better person than God?  Why didn’t Jesus cure everyone while he was here?  Why didn’t he simply eliminate cancer, especially childhood cancer?  And Alzheimer’s and ALS and MS and on and on.  Nope.  We die of various maladies begging God for help.  And then we die.  

Miracles are those events that cannot be explained by the science at our disposal.  It is no miracle that so many die of so many maladies.  We understand that.  The so called miracles are so random that they cannot be the result of prayer.  If they are, God sure needs to tell us how he decides who to listen to and who to ignore.  Otherwise he is just mean, or miracles are a myth

The Problem with Catholics

You may have seen that in several recent Catholic newsletters it was announced that a vote for a Democrat would secure a permanent place in hell.  Oh wow. Where do I start?

So, invading the new world and causing genocide among the indigenous people wasn’t enough, the Crusades weren’t enough, the Inquisition wasn’t enough, and the child sex abuse scandals weren’t enough now they damn Democratic voters.  Really?  The unmitigated gall of any group with so much blood on its hands and so much interference in both the legal system and now the voting system is beyond belief.  Rather than beg for forgiveness for their past sins, they are proclaiming that others are going to hell?

I propose we turn this around.  For all the harm the Catholic Church has done to fellow human beings in the past 2000 years it should be clear that members of this church are going to hell.  It should also be obvious that their interference in the progress of women’s reproductive rights that they should all go to jail.  But that is not all.

For promoting false advertising and fraud, the members of the church should all go to jail for bilking their parishioners of billions of dollars by performing fraudulent magical acts including ringing a bell to turn wine and crackers to flesh and blood.  If they insist their magic is real, then they should all go to jail for practicing cannibalism.  For interfering in the operations of the state, the Catholic Church should lose its tax exempt status.  For requiring unhealthy lifestyles for all their clergy they should suffer the categorization of a cult. 

The only real defense the Catholics could offer is that this is all in jest, it is just mythology.  There really is no hell, so threatening to send someone there is a joke.  In fact anyone who would take seriously the notion that the mother of a deity is also a deity is obviously confused about the transitive property and genetics.  And the notion that a mortal is capable of granting forgiveness on behalf of an immortal is absurd.  If any of these myths are true they should be required to present evidence of the existence of hell by its location, they should submit the cracker and wine to analysis after the bell has rung and evidence that there is a deity, their clergy can talk with such a deity and lay people cannot talk to such a deity.  There would be no evidence of truth in these myths thus announcing once and for all that Catholicism is a mythology much like the Roman pantheon of gods.

And, while we are at it, let’s start collecting tax dollars from the church.  Let’s start arresting them for fraud.  Let’s start arresting them for cannibalism, and let’s start arresting them for interfering with women’s rights.  If they want to damn me to hell and have it scare me, they are going to have to convince me there is such a place and that a so-called loving god would send anyone there.  Permanent time-out is not a notion that fits with the “our father in heaven” model.

And finally, it appears to me that the totally uncharitable Republican Party platform is more like hell than anything the Democrats have proposed.  If one could be arrested for being selfish and stupid this would qualify as well.

Valley of the Shadow of Death?

Psalm 23:4  (King James Version)

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Right.  I believe that.

But,

• I will keep handguns in my home and vehicles.
• I will get a concealed handgun and a carry permit.
• I will put deadbolts on my door and lock them each night.
• I will lock my car.
• I will install an alarm system.
• I will carry pepper spray in my purse.
• I will get all the recommended vaccinations and flu shots
• I will avoid certain areas of town after dark.
• I will support deportation and block immigration of people I think are bad.

But,

Psalm 18:2 (King James Version)

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

Poppycock and balderdash.