Praying for rain?
Just a couple of random thoughts on the news that Georgia Gov. Sonny Purdue is going to stand on the steps of the state Capitol today, joined by lawmakers and ministers, and they are all going to pray for rain:
1. I think we can all agree that Purdue isn't the first guy to think of asking God for a lttle help during the drought. Does he believe that if a few more people get together in front of the TV cameras, the Almighty will say, "Oh, man. That's right, I was supposed to send some precipitation down there to Georgia?"
2. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said, "God is not some cosmic bell-boy." The theology of petitionary prayer is not a simple matter.
3. While it is always troublesome for an American Baptist to see clergy cheek-by-jowl with politicians -- we're big on the separation of church and state -- prayer can't hurt, unless all you're doing during the crisis is praying, in which case you're just wasting everybody's time -- including the Almighty's.
1. I think we can all agree that Purdue isn't the first guy to think of asking God for a lttle help during the drought. Does he believe that if a few more people get together in front of the TV cameras, the Almighty will say, "Oh, man. That's right, I was supposed to send some precipitation down there to Georgia?"
2. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said, "God is not some cosmic bell-boy." The theology of petitionary prayer is not a simple matter.
3. While it is always troublesome for an American Baptist to see clergy cheek-by-jowl with politicians -- we're big on the separation of church and state -- prayer can't hurt, unless all you're doing during the crisis is praying, in which case you're just wasting everybody's time -- including the Almighty's.
posted by Michael Riley at 12:17 PM
40 Comments:
hope Ray doesn't go to pray.It'll be a long, long drought for sure.
Riley wrote:
"While it is always troublesome for an American Baptist to see clergy cheek-by-jowl with politicians -- we're big on the separation of church and state ..."
Silly me. I thought American Baptists were "big" on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Have you forgotten, Reverend, that little parable that Christ taught about the widow and the corrupt judge?
Luke 18:1-8
Were I to pray for rain it wouldn't change a thing. Nor would it if you prayed, anonymous.
I can't wait to see the results of this event. At some point the drought will end, naturally, of course. Then those praying will rejoice at God's awesome power and thank him for answering their prayers. It's the same thing as when the faithful gasp in awe when Sylvia Browne or John Edwards seem to get a prediction right.
As P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said... well, you've heard it before.
It would make the people praying feel good, doesn't that count for anything Ray? Of course not, Ray of sunshine you ain't.
People don't understand prayer.
So what if this politician wants to pray via television with other politicians and gathered people. Good. Better than watching the violent, off color, foolish nonsesne that is normal viewing drivel on tv.
Free country, after all. Can't hurtto pray.
And it's funny what people will say about such an "innocuous" little thing as prayer. Obviously the act is quite threatening to some. How sad.
You mean prayer isn't a simple thing but salvation is?
Anonymous wrote:
"It would make the people praying feel good, doesn't that count for anything Ray?"
Most definitely not. If accomplishing nothing other than making people feel good is alright with you then you're probably okay with people who sell phony cures for all sorts of ailments when they don't actually work at all. But buying the stuff makes people feel good...
"Of course not, Ray of sunshine you ain't."
Well, I'm not here to make you feel good.
Margaret wrote:
"Free country, after all. Can't hurtto pray."
It sure can hurt. Don't forget those folks, like the Christian Scientists, who believe that prayer is a perfectly good substitute for medical intervention. So let's revise your statement: Prayer can't hurt, as long as it's backed up by modern medicine and as long as your life doesn't depend on the results of it.
"And it's funny what people will say about such an "innocuous" little thing as prayer. Obviously the act is quite threatening to some. How sad."
It's only "innocuous" when when you're not risking anything important by doing it.
There's this saying about a man in a flood. Help comes three times. Two boats come by as the flood waters rise, but the man says no to the help each time, saying "God will save me. Finally he finds himself on the roof of his house, the waters getting ever higher and a helicopter comes by, the pilot telling him to get in, but again the man says " God will save me".
The helicopter goes away. The man drowns. At the pearly gates, he meets God, and says "I don't understand, I've always been faithful, kept the commandments; why didn't You save me?" God said to the man "Look, I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what else do you want??"
Prayer is misunderdtood. Medical attention is one of those things...no brainer, pray and receive medical attention. I don't argue with you there, Mr. Ray.
But prayer is very powerful in what it does, and how it works. People who use it only in times of crisis cannot appreciate its effects in everyday life.
"misunderstood".
M
Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:
I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
Benstein wrote:
"I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period."
What a wimpy majority it would be that allowed a minor percentage of people to push it around. No, people who believe in God run this country. The problem is that they don't like a Constitution that is neutral with respect to religion and they feel like they're being slighted by having to accept the rights of others. It is a jealous majority indeed that feels threatened simply because it can't push minorities around the way it would like to.
"I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat."
I've never heard such a claim except from the jealous majority. As I said above, our Constitution is neutral with respect to religion, not atheistic, although, it certainly is godless. But that doesn't make it atheistic. It merely allows people the freedom of their own religion without government dictates. Yes, it means freedom of religion! It's a shame that some people can't see the difference. That neutrality has made it possible for religion to grow and prosper in the U.S. We are one of the most religious countries in the world, if not the most religious. Be careful what you wish for - it may come true.
P.S. Who the heck are Nick and Jessica?
Margaret wrote:
"But prayer is very powerful in what it does, and how it works. People who use it only in times of crisis cannot appreciate its effects in everyday life."
I've yet to see it - and I've been watching. What I see is self-deception causing people to cling to their beliefs even though their prayers don't get answered.
Down in Georgia they got their rain. Of course, the faithful will believe it was the result of prayer ... forget the fact that there was rain in the forecast before they prayed. But even if it rained a month later or a year later or never again they'd still find a way to rejoice and talk about God's will and that he had something else planned for them (all good, of course!). That's how it works: everything that happens confirms the belief and all sorts of excuses are made for when prayer seems not to work.
This is not unlike when one of those silly TV psychics occasionally gets one right and the celebrations begin. And all of the wrong predictions are either spun to make them seem like they were right when they weren't or forgotten altogether: you remember the hits and forget the misses. Same thing with prayer.
Again, we will agree to disagree here, Ray. I cannot go into my own personal life to prove something to you. It is far too painful. But I know the power of prayer. I am familiar with the serenity of it. And I wasn't asking to win the lottery. Or to save Aunt Millie.
Self-deception is a foul and incorrect assertion of what you believe prayer results are. How on earth would you even know? What, because you've been "looking"?? If you are basing your findings on some scientific theory, you are simply barking up the wrong tree.
You cannot be an expert on something you have NO CLUE about. You certainly are entitled to your opinion here in this regard, but not much else.
Ray, we all know you know the popular culture figures Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson..you are an expert (self-proclaimed) on about everything else. Now is not the time to feign ignorance because you are embarrassed to admit to your PEOPLE magazine addiction! Fess-up snob.
Anonymous, you really need a hobby. After all, you have nothing to do with your time but insert yourself where you're not needed. Isn't there an old house somewhere that you can haunt?
Margaret, what you're doing is insulating prayer from scrutiny. That's how supernatural, pseudoscientific and other beliefs manage to survive despite their failures. Nothing you've said hasn't already been said by the practitioners of all manner of strange yet cherished ideas. Whether it's crystal healing, aromatherapy, reflexology, channeling or anything else, the believers always say that skeptics don't get it because you have to believe to understand. They say that science isn't in a position to know what it's all about or that it's a personal thing not amenable to testing. Nothing ever penetrates their defense shields. Sorry, but self-deception really is the issue here.
Self-insulation. That is truly an exceptional piece of psychobabble.
Again, please don't speak of what you don't know. Prayer is indeed something cherished, but far more than an idea.
It is a way of life. You base it on either success or failure, like "dear God, help me get through...". And then we wait like some hopeful empty-headed beings, waiting for the outcome. Unbelievable.
There are folks who pray like that, and that is the extent of their prayer life. That is not the essence of prayer.
This maybe an exercise in futility to explain something to one who is clearly set in his belief about what prayer is and isn't...
Prayer is an awareness of self and of God. It is infused in all that one does. There are prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of want and need, prayers of affection. Prayer is communciation. It can be in word form, but sometimes is not. It expresses joy and sorrow.
If one is focusing purely on whether it "works", whether it will produce a certain outcome, then prayer is incomplete, lacking for the one who prayers, as it is far more than that.
Now, this is MY version of prayer, not based on a definition, save my own.
And, skeptics do not get it, because at the time they are skeptics they are immersed in another set of beliefs. So there you are.
No, Margaret, 'self-insulation' is your term, not mine.
You can define prayer any way you like but the subject right from the start of this thread, was petitionary prayer so you're changing the subject. It is testable and it fails.
And your insistence on calling skepticism another set of beliefs is simply another belief of your own - one that neither you nor anyone else here has been able to put together an argument for. It's obvious, though, that you need the comfort of feeling that you've reduced skepticism to mere belief. I guess it's easier than responding to the arguments.
The one who calls just about everything else not akin to his own lack of belief a belief system is splitting hairs.
And, the one who digresses from the subject about as much as anyone else here is splitting hairs about THAT too.
But the fact remains that you put it out there - let's tear apart prayer, and let the words sit in cyberspace and gel as if they were the truth about prayer as a whole.
Hits and misses, defense shields, etc.; there are just some things that cannot be tested and are a matter of faith. So foreign and dismissable by you, I know. You see it as a cop out, because you can't get it. You can't get it, Ray. You cannot grasp the concept.
And arguments? give me an argument in regard to prayer once you have experienced it PERSONALLY, and I'll take you on. Otherwise, I'm not going to bother, because you don't know what you're talking about.
Ray-n man.
Margaret wrote:
"The one who calls just about everything else not akin to his own lack of belief a belief system is splitting hairs."
So it's splitting hairs to refer to the opposite of non-belief as a belief system? Huh?
"And, the one who digresses from the subject about as much as anyone else here is splitting hairs about THAT too."
I was addressing the subject directly, wasn't I? And yet that elicits a complaint?
"But the fact remains that you put it out there - let's tear apart prayer, and let the words sit in cyberspace and gel as if they were the truth about prayer as a whole."
No, Michael Riley put it out there: prayer for rain. That's petitionary prayer. And I responded to that. Then you brought up a whole slew of ideas about prayer that were irrelevant to petitionary prayer.
"Hits and misses, defense shields, etc.; there are just some things that cannot be tested and are a matter of faith. So foreign and dismissable by you, I know. You see it as a cop out, because you can't get it. You can't get it, Ray. You cannot grasp the concept."
The problem is the arbitrary nature of faith. It means different things to different people (that sounds familiar, doesn't it?). There are people out there who believe that medicine isn't necessary; that God will intervene. There are also those who believe that modern, evidence-based medicine isn't as good as certain kinds of religious medicine, full of chants and spooky elixirs and requiring sacrifices of living things. Tell me this, do you believe that medicine should be proven safe and effective before it's allowed to be used or shall we just have faith that it works? I'm quite serious here. There are whole industries devoted to having faith in unproven "medicines". Can you give a consistent and intellectually honest answer that treats both kinds of faith the same? I can.
"And arguments? give me an argument in regard to prayer once you have experienced it PERSONALLY, and I'll take you on. Otherwise, I'm not going to bother, because you don't know what you're talking about."
I lost both my parents to cancer a few years back. Let me assure you that they were being prayed for. That's personal experience, isn't it? Or does it only count when you get a positive result?
Ray, obviously YOU didn't pray for your cancer stricken parents because that is not within your BELIEF system. Maybe if you did, one or both would still be here.
I BELIEVE the Ray and Peggy show is predictable and boring!
Yet you have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go so you stay here.
peggy's pal wrote:
"Ray, obviously YOU didn't pray for your cancer stricken parents because that is not within your BELIEF system. Maybe if you did, one or both would still be here."
Listen, microcephalic, when your parents die after you've prayed for them, come back here and tell us that it was your fault because you didn't pray hard enough, okay? Let's see if you can keep them alive in spite of illness like cancer.
In your demented fanaticism to mock me do you even realize that what you're saying is that prayer is sufficient and that modern medicine isn't necessary? Think it through next time, bumpkin.
Seriously, how old are you? I think you must be very young. You'll learn..... someday..... maybe.
I am so sorry for your loss, Ray. I am really sorry. I am a cancer survivor and often wonder why. People prayed for me. I prayed for myself. I always wonder why I'm still here. But I am grateful nonetheless. I am grateful for a lot of things, and am acutely aware of both pain in others, and the natural beauty of this world (hence the even stronger belief in God). I do see the world's ugliness too - not blind.
I am crying, I'm sorry. We all die. I don't know why some stay and some leave. Better prayer? No. Some people say "it was just his/her time". I don't buy that either. That is no comfort.
You asked me whether I believed medicine should be tested before used.
I don't know who you are coming across who believes in God who would think that medicine should not be tested. Medicine is poison if not given to the right people, or tested well before use. That's simply a given. Look at Thalidomide - did anyone test that before they gave it to pregnant to help them sleep better? What a disaster. Now the doctors are using Thalidomide as a cancer drug (no lie). But I will say that look at Vioxx and others supposedly tested. Even with the testing, we're still not sure of the outcome when people take it. Testing has its limits.
So you experienced death after prayer use. That is personal. Prayer in this case is a voiced or silent petitioned hope for a certain result. It is a communion with the Higher Power. To not receive the desired outcome is devastating. I had no time to pray for my Dad. No hopeful prayers. No goodbyes. He just went.
Still, I will pray. Foolish to you, and now at least I have a partial idea as to why.
PS - and "OTHER" - if you don't like the ray and margaret show, there are others all through out blogworld.
Psst... Margaret, "Ray" is a figment of Riley's imagination. He is Riley's alter-ego. "Ray" doesn't exist except on this blog site.
Ray wrote:
"I lost both my parents to cancer a few years back. Let me assure you that they were being prayed for. That's personal experience, isn't it? Or does it only count when you get a positive result?"
I am sorry for your loss, Ray, and I will certainly offer prayers for the repose of the souls of your folks. That said, why would you apparently assume (a) that suffering is not part and parcel of almost every human life, and (b) that a loving and compassionate God did not answer the prayers of those that were praying for your folks? In short, why would you presume to think that both God's purpose and greater glory were somehow not advanced through and by the suffering your parents endured?
Anon 9:46am - Mr. Riley and Ray do not have the same writing style. No alter ego...
Margaret wrote:
"I don't buy that either. That is no comfort."
This is the crux (no pun intended) of the issue. It's all about comfort, not reason. I can't accept that, especially when reason is acceptable to you in other areas of life. I can't accept that double-standard. Maintaining a single standard is the only honest way to go through life. I view seeking warm, comfortable lies as a bad way to treat yourself. Frankly, I think I'm worth more than that.
Anonymous wrote:
" why would you apparently assume (a) that suffering is not part and parcel of almost every human life,...",
Finally an 'anonymous' that isn't hell-bent on mocking! My honest answer: I don't assume any such thing. I see it every day! I can't accept the idea of trying to convince oneself to accept the idea that suffering is for a reason. I can't accept that a "loving" God allows suffering and death. To accept such a thing is, to me, a failure to take oneself seriously. It's the self-respect thing again and the lack of an honest, rational standard.
"... and (b) that a loving and compassionate God did not answer the prayers of those that were praying for your folks?"
They were being prayed for to get better. No result.
"In short, why would you presume to think that both God's purpose and greater glory were somehow not advanced through and by the suffering your parents endured?"
One has to believe the myth before one can accept such an idea.
Anonymous wrote:
" "Ray" doesn't exist except on this blog site.",
No, you don't exist except in the mind of a sad little boy who needs a serious dose of attention -- and who can't get it anywhere else.
No. Some people say "it was just his/her time". I don't buy that either. That is no comfort. - Me
Ray you took what I said completely out context to prove some other point. (Sigh)
Now you're into sad little boys, eh Ray? You do have something in common with the catholic clergy after all, :}
anonymous, you're the sad little boy. And I want nothing to do with you.
What a sad, pathetic life you must be living. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. So you end up here getting your kicks by annoying people. You're nothing but a social misfit.
Margaret wrote:
"Ray you took what I said completely out context to prove some other point."
No, my point is the same point I've made all along: That religion is a pacifier that makes "feel good" excuses about death and things that go wrong in life.
Religion a pacifier? Then you've contradicted yourself from past posts, because clearly, that's not how you've seen it in prior moods.
Faith, however aids in dealing with the very difficult things we face in life. If one has faith in a higher power, one may not understand, but the bitterness may be filtered out sooner, or be eliminated in the process of grief.
Make no mistake; I have faith, and even with it, the blow of losing one you love is no less agonizing with faith. But I do have hope (great hope) of seeing that person again. Do you? (Agnostics do or don't...maybe, I guess.)
I am not letting go of that hope because you say it is silly, or that it pacifies me. Pacify. Oh, would that that were true.
My perspective is just different, Ray.
Margaret, the 'hope' that you have is, whether you accept it or not, a pacifier. Not as in a child's pacifier, but as in something you use to relieve anxiety. Hope pacifies, doesn't it? My point is simply that one of the main reasons people have religion is because there are things about the world that are unsettling and religion relieves the anxiety that this brings.
I can understand that but again I have no need for such appeals. And this is quite consistent with what I've said all along.
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