Prayer is typically employed to entreat a god into intervening in earthly affairs on your behalf: cure a loved one of disease, cause a hurricane to change its path so other poor suckers get nailed, make money fall from the sky, etc. This type of prayer works only when rare hits are counted and the frequent null results (misses) are not.
Today's heretical topic: Why does the Christian god fail to even semi-consistently live up to Matthew 7:7?
Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Will your prayer be answered? It's as likely as a roll of the dice. (Unless, of course, praying for something you want makes you then behave differently, helping to bring about the desired outcome.)
In 2005 Pope John Paul died, as all animals eventually do. For much of his late life John Paul suffered from Parkinson's disease. Which is a hell of a holy thank-you for a job well done, if you ask me. Prayer may be good for psychosomatic afflictions, but if you've got a real malady, put your 'faith' in medical science. And even then you may be out of luck.
If Catholicism were an instrument of a god, wouldn't this god choose to use it effectively? Why cure some kid in backwoods Tennessee of a gimp leg? Why not, Alakazaam! and Halleluiah!, transform the Pope's sputtering, run-down body into one as fabulous as a young Fabio? Like some hunk of jaw-dropping powers, the Pope could have ripped through his white robe, revealing a tanned, flexed chest and six-pack abs. This would have provided indisputable evidence to the millions who regularly press their palms together that the activity is more than emotionally-satisfying busywork.
Why pray for health? It works no better than chance and what remission/recovery rates predict. Need obvious evidence? The hospitals are chock full of Christians.
Why pray for wealth? Christian towns and Christian counties and Christian states and Christian nations are no wealthier than their heathen counterparts (controlling, as much as possible, for other variables).
Can Matthew be accused of stretching the truth? Well, no. There would have to be some truth in his proclamation to stretch. And there isn't any. At least none of the supernatural variety. The writer of the Matthew Gospel was both deluded and wrong.
Many people put the Bible on a pedestal, as if it were a perfect document, filled with wisdom. To those who think so, I say, Read it--all of it.
Oh, sure, there are the occasional pearls of wisdom, such as: Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's donkey. Nor wife.
Bible worshipers habitually use one or two dozen words very selectively clipped from their revered book to support some position on X, Y, or Z. Should women be ordained as ministers? You can find a few passages that can be construed as supporting this, many more in opposition. The answer to the question of the ordainment of women is then: a) yes b) no c) neither of the above d) all of the above.
One Bible -- so many possibilities. Every week ministers, priests, and preachers string a few "pearls" of what they consider biblical wisdom together to hang their sermon upon.
Once, when in the library lobby at the college where I taught, I picked up a copy of a free Christian newsletter. The lead article "What Do I Owe These People?" for the week's issue of Gospel Minutes, was a transcribed sermon. In it the author, David Thurman, explored the attitude Christians should take toward their church. The subtitles to the long article consisted of these points. 1. Don't Offend It 2. Build It 3. Proclaim It 4. Motivate It 5. Put Up with It 6. Defend It
To add divine authority to his points, in each of the sub-sections the writer spliced in a passage from the Bible, chapter and verse. That some of these "pearls of wisdom" were contradictory to each other was glaringly obvious. At least to me. I wondered why other readers of the rag wouldn't scratch their head in wonderment upon encountering a bald case of something not making sense.
In the section, "Don't Offend It," the preacher used 1 Corinthians to make this point: Christians are not to Associate with those who call themselves Christians but do not live like it. You give offense to the church when you choose to sin.
One page later, under "Put Up with It," the very same preacher picks a gem from Ephesians to argue this: As believers we are to put up with each other. That means we tolerate each other, in spite of our failings....the church is not perfect, it is full of people who still struggle with sin.
In the above passages we've got six plus six equaling six. First, don't hang out with those who sin, because you give offense to the church. Second, tolerate each other because the church is not perfect. In fact, it is full of sinners.
Confused? Allow me to translate: Don't associate with sinners because you give offense to an entity that is imperfect and full of sinners.
At its very foundation, and with each story built above, religion relies upon shared values and beliefs. Preaching largely consists of the neatly circumscribed reasoning used to safely promote one's own set of values and beliefs.
In the Bible you will not find the book "The Catholic Gospel," nor "The Baptist Gospel." Etc. (Or more specifically, "The 1950s Alabama Baptists Gospel" . . . "The 1970s Massachusetts Catholic Gospel" . . . etc.) Rather, each congregation mines the pages of the Bible for material that supports their present brand of belief, their current set of values.
One reason why the Bible is such a popular book is precisely because it presents no perfectly clear and consistent message. To just about any important question of the day, one can find a multitude of answers. Which makes the document not correct, but handy. Like a social tool of the Swiss Army knife variety.
BELIEVE and true it shall be!
The above bit of wisdom was provided to me by a local, streetside church marquee.
Okay. I believe I will win this week's Florida State Lottery. And here's the potentially astounding part--the part that would make this not just a fabulous coincidence, but a bona fide miracle--I haven't bought a ticket. Let's see what happens.
One of the prophecies contained in the Bible is that Jesus had predicted he would be double-crossed by Judas. And he was. (He also predicted that the Roman Lions would beat the Jerusalem Wildebeest, in overtime, at the coliseum. He was off on the point spread, but close.)
I wonder, why hadn't Jesus used his 4-dimensional space-time vision to divine the exact time and place he would rise after death? Can you imagine the crowds? They could have sold tickets and set up a table of baked goods to raise money for the new church.
I can't find the answer to that one in the Bible, but I did find this. Acts 16:31 in the King James Version reads
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
And thy house? I thought each person has to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and Spiritual Fitness Trainer. What if a teenager with eleven brothers and sisters is saved? Are those already off to college also saved? What about the live-in nanny from Pakistan? She spends more time with the kids than mom does, so I don't see why not.
In the same section of the Bible (Acts 17:22) we also discover this gem:
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
This is clearly a case of a crock calling the kettle full of beans.
Acts 19:11 makes an impressive point.
And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul.
Special miracles for an audience of special believers. (It seems I am in a snarky mood.)
And finally--for the purpose of this rambling rant--we arrive at a story as told in Acts 20:9-12:
And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again and had broken bread, and eaten, and taken and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.
Paul was so long-winded he bored a young man to death. Same thing almost happened to me each and every Sunday my mother dragged our family to church. Bored to death. But rather than sliding off the pew and onto the marble floor, I blocked out the priest and prayed. I prayed in vivid detail, often with imagined sound effects. I asked the god of my church (I didn't know of any others back then) to convince my father to buy me that Honda dirt bike advertised in the pages of Boys Life magazine. Not the dinky one with the lawnmower engine and the wheelbarrow tires. The one with the handlebar throttle and chrome exhaust pipe.
My prayer was never answered, no matter how hard I squeezed my palms and eyelids together, no matter how many times I included "please," in my inwardly whispered words. I don't know why. Who knows, maybe my prayer went unanswered because America is a Christian nation and I had requested a motorcycle made in Japan, which is a "what-the-hell-do-they-worship?" nation.
Perhaps that church marquee should be amended this way: Believe in something; and something will happen. Just don't get too specific.
In Exodus 4 Moses asks his god what he should do if the Israelites don't listen to him. The answer: perform miracles. Moses is instructed to throw his staff to the ground. It becomes a snake.
When Moses inserts his hand into his pocket as next commanded, upon withdrawing it he finds the hand diseased. Placed back into the pocket, it is cured. Like magic.
To the ancient mind, "miracles" were signs of divine intervention. So when Moses stood before his tribe and pulled a dove out of his sleeve and let fly, they believed. (Or maybe he told them he had just spoken to a flaming bush.)
But here's the trouble: in that era miracles and those who performed them were a dime a wicker-basket. Thus, in Exodus 7, Moses appears before the Egyptian Pharaoh and does the staff-into-a-snake trick, yet the Pharaoh is unconvinced. His own "magicians" throw down their staffs. More snakes. But Moses holds the trump card: his snake eats the others!
To primitive cultures the globe over, the mysterious, the magical and the supernatural were one and the same. Gods existed in the gaps of human understanding--where they still reside.
While the Bible refers to Moses as a miracle-worker, it uses the blue-collar term "magician" for the Egyptian performers of the same feat. I guess that's what you get for not paying your union dues.
Enter Jesus. According to Matthew, we learn that wise men, or "Magi," appeared at the manger upon Jesus' birth. Yes, these men were yet more practitioners of the occult arts. That's what made them "wise" in the eyes of the unschooled. (Their bi-monthly astrological forecasts published in the Papyrus Times were also a hit, no doubt.)
What does Jesus do as an adult to convince the masses that he's really, really special? He performs a number of feats that make people's chins hit the floor. He walks on water, turns water into wine, cures leprosy, and feeds 5000 with one box of Mac-n-Cheese.
Jesus warns his followers to be weary of the false prophets. You know, those other guys who also perform supernatural feats.
Having promised an encore, Jesus ended his show in a puff of smoke. It was then up to his disciples to win enough converts to support a church. Fortunately, Jesus and his "Father" granted the apostles a lifetime membership in the guild of miracle workers. It seems few Jews and Gentiles were willing to buy the Jesus Christ stories, one mythology among many in the cultural crossroads of the Middle East, without witnessing something capable of making them go agape.
That is why in Acts of the Apostles 6:8, the New International Version, we read,
Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.
In other words, the people weren't following Jesus on their own: They needed signs. Thus Stephen had been empowered to provide the necessary, "True Messiah, next left."
With all the other shows in town, competition was stiff. Maybe that's why the New Living Translation pulls an Emeril and "bam!" cranks it up a notch:
Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people.
Stephen didn't settle for ho-hum miracles. He went for the top shelf "amazing" stuff.
Moving in the opposite direction, the Message Bible seems to recognize the potential confusion created by so many secondary characters performing miracles. They word the passage this way:
Stephen, brimming with God's grace and energy, was doing wonderful things among the people.
Maybe Stephen's "wonderful things" included spending a weekend with Jimmy Carter on a Habitat for Humanity building site.
To gain a following the Christian religion, and dozens upon dozens of others, relied upon the astounding of an audience through mysterious feats. Or at least stories about these. Today the only thing required is faith in the veracity of the ancient stories.
It's a good thing the modern mind doesn't require miraculous signs before putting money in the collection plate. Performing a miracle under the bright lights provided by science, education, and technology seems to be impossible. I've never seen reliable video footage of a priest levitating, or any such thing, have you?
Contemporary society does sport individuals who achieve a following by confounding their audience. When truthfully advertised, they go by the label, "magician." Better yet, "illusionist."
In my opinion, there is nothing particularly inspiring about being dumbfounded. Nor is there anything noble about slack-jawed gullibility.
I might attend church if priests pulled real doves from their sleeves. Instead, they repeat ancient stories of their heroes' feats. How boring. At least the tales in the Harry Potter series are a tad more modern.
[If you enjoy learning about how specific verses in the Bible have been worded differently, you would probably enjoy my book, The Naked Bible. I invite you to check it out.]
The miracles we hear about today are comparatively tepid. We've got an oil slick in the shape of the virgin Mary (or maybe Little Red Riding Hood), an arthritic elder taking a few steps on the stage of a tent revival, and a tortilla with a brown singe mysteriously resembling the profile of Jesus. Or maybe Willie Nelson. No walking on water, no feeding thousands with three boxes of instant pudding.
Because I am a scientific kind of guy, I will now, at this very moment--which I am fairly certain "now" means--conduct an experiment on the power of prayer. Though I will focus on the supposed singular entity of the Bible God, I will allow any god out there in the theosphere (I'm not prejudiced nor partial) to intrude and answer the call. I'll give the Bible God or Any God within hearing distance 10 chances. One out of 10, and I'll consider it a sign. Here goes:
1. God, please warm up my coffee. The cup has gone cold sitting next to the telephone. Cold coffee is a bummer. Being all-powerful, you can spare a few kilowatts. All I'm asking you to do is violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and make heat flow in the opposite direction it normally does. I'm sure you are not constrained by well-established, scientific principles. I'll give you a minute to do it. . . .
Nope. Still cold. Guess I'll give the microwave the same minute.
By the way, the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the flow of energy from more concentrated to more diffuse, otherwise known as entropy, implies that the universe has a shelf-life. All suns will eventually shed their dense heat and become lifeless cinders. The cosmic furnaces will flicker out one by one, the lights going dark. Space will become a mighty frigid place. A hell of cold awaits the universe, if predictions are correct. Anyone left behind will not be gnashing their teeth; they'll be trying to keep them from chattering.
2. God, please bring a woodpecker, of any species, to the bird-feeding station outside my window--within the next 30 seconds. I can't give you a whole day, because that is liable to happen by chance, for we have three species living in the area. . . . One one-hundred, two one-hundred, three one-hundred. . . .
Nope. Just a cardinal. And he came at 12 seconds. The male cardinal feeds frequently, so I can't count that as a hit. Others might, but I am going to hold you to a higher standard than chance alone.
3. Make that squirrel scampering across the ground, running from the base of one tree to another, trip and fall. . . .
Nope. Maybe you wouldn't have answered that one anyway, seeing it was a bit cruel. Although watching one of the many garden vandals living in our trees skid on his nose and flip tail over teakettle would have been good entertainment.
Now there is a titmouse at the feeder. Sorry, God, can't count that as a hit. It's not what I asked for.
4. Okay, how about this: There is a red pen on my desktop. God, move that Bic. . . .
Alright, just make it twitch a bit. . . . Nope.
5. God, please make my 6 year-old dog, curled up on the rocking chair at the far end of the room, sit up and say, "I could really go for a bone right now."
Nope. Maybe that one was unfair. The Bible says nothing about dogs speaking in tongues. And this time of morning ours is one lazy pooch. Furthermore, as far as I can tell she is a non-believer in the gods of humans, so why would she answer the call?
6. Make my brindle-coated, 5 year-old dog number two, sleeping in her doggie bed, wake up and give a yawn. . . .
Nope, still sleeping.
7. Okay God, I'm going to flip an old silver dollar I've got in my desk drawer, a gift from my grandmother who is, according to some, in heaven at this very moment, perhaps within nudging distance of you. I'll flip it three times. Make it come up heads three times in a row.
I must be a gambling man, because the probability that chance alone could bring three heads in a row is 12.5%. Even a minor god could beat those odds. Here goes: First flip. . . .
Tails. No go. Because I said I'd flip three times, I'll finish what I started.
Tails again. Heads. One out of three. Well, thank you, for providing me--if I were the superstitious kind--with the opportunity to imagine that you've given me a hint of a hint there is someone/something listening. You did, after all, make my coin come up heads once in three tries.
8. As I write this I'm listening to blues on the radio. God, please interrupt the current song, "My Problem is You" (a coincidence?) by Al Green. Break into the programming with . . . anything. Just do it before the song ends. . . .
Nope.
9. God, my bladder is full. Too much coffee. I really should go to the bathroom, but I hate leaving my desk. However, it's difficult to get work done when you are the verge of holding your little general and squinting your eyes as if pee is likely to come flying out your pupils. Please make the toilet in the hallway bathroom flush to inspire me to get off my butt. . . .
Nope. Alright, one more request before I hit the John.
10. Dear God, a male ruby-throated hummingbird visits the hummer feeder outside my window this time of morning. Please make the frenetic little dude do a 1080 degree spin (3 full airborne pirouettes) before inserting his slender beak into the feeder . . . .
Now that's an interesting result. A squirrel just climbed the cypress tree from which the hummer feeder hangs, hitting the small branch, making the feeder sway, a bit like a metronome. Tic...Tic...Tic.
Ha! A squirrel climbed smack into the middle of my prayer experiment. Hallelujah -- nature exists!
Those with Spaghetti-Os in the bowl of their skull may reason, I asked for a spinning hummingbird, and a feeder-shaking squirrel appeared, which means that a god answered my request creatively. Sorry, but that's post hoc bologna.
God, what about the words of Saint Luke, (11:9) --
And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened?
Yes, I know, the Bible also says that thou shalt not piss off this god by testing him. But it's not like I prayed for anything big, like ending world hunger or resurrecting Michael Jackson and making him black again.
Maybe Luke's words should be amended:
And I say verily unto you, Ask, but not too specifically; seek and ye shall find something or other; knock, and be prepared to wait.
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