I guess that I should start by saying that I don't believe in God and I haven't for a while, not that you won't pick up on that pretty quickly. I'm not without all belief but my beliefs don't really go in that bearded miraculous crucified direction. I don't believe in the power of prayer either, but as I've never been trapped in a foxhole with shells going off all around me that may change if I'm ever in that situation. After saying that, on the few occasions I've prayed my prayers have not been answered, so it's little wonder I'm sceptical.
Whenever there is a disaster I despair at all the 'hopes and prayers' that are bandied about, especially the 'prayers' bit. 'Hope' I can deal with and that's all that prayer amounts to - wishful thinking, so I guess it does no harm, but for me, it does no good either apart from maybe a show of solidarity. Prayers seem not to be very effective when children freeze to death with no shelter, shooters kill classrooms of high school kids in America, floods wipe out whole communities, tsunamis wash away whole countries, child soldiers kill child soldiers, suicide bombers bomb pop concerts, new viruses devastate and bring death to swathes of people, animals are wiped away as the forests are chopped and burned, politicians lie, cheat and take the piss out of the God they claim to worship... Yes, those hopes and prayers don't seem to be worth the words or the breath that mumbles them. They simply don't work.
Listen, I know it's an old tired argument, but if God were really there (you know that omnipresent God that sees every sparrow that falls and loves us all despite our sins and is all-forgiving) then why in His own name doesn't he do something about it? Is it his mysterious ways? Is it because he sent his son to die for us all so he feels he's done his bit? Or is it that he doesn't exist? Now let me think...
The hold that God has on this world is quite frankly ridiculous to me. All those prayers and ceremonies, the hours and hours of reading Holy Books, the pomp and ritual to no bloody effect at all are no more than a waste of time in my view. It may make the god-fearing feel better about themselves by it might be better if they got off their God trip and tried harder to do it for themselves. By all means, we should live by the mostly sensible rules those storybooks set out, but I'm not going waste time talking to and worshipping a deity that isn't bothered because he isn't there and never was. Each of us need to man and woman up for God's sake, accept responsibility, and stop passing the buck to something that isn' listening because he's not home and never was. Maybe we should stop praying to God and try doing something about it ourselves even if it is only repeating a mantra or affirmation.
Think about it god(s) has/have more pain to answer for than he (or she, or them) does good (if he or she or them were really real), wars, genocides, horrendous tortures, famine, sacrifice, mind-numbingly stupid codes and rules, confessions, guilt and Hail Mary's, plague and pestilence and he (or she blah blah) isn't even bloody there when you need him unsurprisingly. Is he on holiday? Asleep? A bit busy? Or simply nonexistent? I know what I think based on the evidence. Talk about blind bloody faith. Pray? You may as well be talking to yourself, or a wall, or a direction, or to the sky - as billions all over the world do to absolutely no effect because all of those pious, pleading words are empty and wasted.
You know, thinking about it maybe we shouldn't blame God after all. It's hard to blame something that was never there in the first place except in our needy egotistical imaginations. Perhaps we'd do better to blame ourselves for being so gullible and for stupidly believing our own fairy stories.
Amen.
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