Prayer is Like an American Express Card
Yesterday, I saw a sticker on an expensive Land Rover that said “Prayer Changes Things.” Everyone knows this, of course, as god is aways deciding the outcome of major sporting events. Then again, I thought to myself, does god help out anyone other than professional sports athletes? Is this bumper sticker trying to impress me by lying?
I continued on my merry way, past some homeless people and an impoverished Mexican family crammed into a beat down truck. It occurred to me that only two types of people would believe this sticker’s bold assertion: the uneducated, and people from wealthy countries.
It goes without saying that uneducated people are the people most susceptible to superstition. My guess is that Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein do/did not engage in voodoo, or beseech the gods to grant rain in time of drought. On the other hand, the uneducated might see a one-to-one relationship between their prayers to god and deeds on earth and the response god gives them. The mysteries of the universe will always be mysteries, with the reasons beyond their reach. They move within serendipity, looking at coincidence as evidence of action by something bigger than themselves. They pray for rain, and if rain comes, whomever they prayed to listened and took pity. If rain doesn’t come, it doesn’t mean that someone isn’t there, it simply means that someone has decided against them. Prayer changes things, and sometimes it doesn’t. That is the philosophy of the simple-minded.
People from wealthy countries, even the stupid among them, understand that even if they can’t grasp the answer to something, there is probably an answer somewhere, written by someone smarter than themselves. They cannot, however, see a bigger picture to this knowledge even when Science does not have an immediate answer. We may not know exactly how to treat cancer yet, but we know that when people live or die from it, there is something in the gentics or the treatment that effected this result. Those of us with some sense do not immediately forget all the books underlying the knowledge only to lift our heads to the quiet heavens and give thanks. People in wealthy countries are so used to the surroundings of technology that they forget quickly that all of it had some measure in the success of someone living through a terrible ailment. An MRI machine or 100 million dollars poured into new chemotherapy research is forgotten by their sullied religious minds, as though these things were merely a bush on the edge of a witch doctor’s land. Prayer changes things to the wealthy people because they don’t realize how good they have it. They are not in the middle of an African steppe, pleading with the sky to save the gangrenous leg of their beloved child. They are in a hospital, surrounded by a billion dollars of equipment and thousands of years of learning painfully extracted from life and death by countless men and women who now rest in the earth.
Close friends of mine find miracles in many things, including the salvation of their loved ones from death. Their earnest prayers obviously saved this person, as if god had made some mistake and decided at the last moment to seal his beast back into its cage. What about everyone else who has ever uttered a prayer? My aunt died from leukemia in her 70s, begging Jesus to grant her some more time on this earth. What of Christian slaves in the antebellum South? Did god intervene to save every one of them from brutal rape, whippings, beatings, and starvation? Do children not cry out to the great Eternity to fill their stomachs, only to find themselves in the belly of some vulture days later?
The poor and uneducated think prayer works because there can be no other solution. Technology will never save the life of their loved one or bring the rain to save their crops and their families. Either prayer is answered, or it is not. Either way, whomever turns the earth upon its axis hears them. They fail to see that their prayers are answered by timing, not intelligence.
The wealthy, by contrast, are too stupid to realize that every step they take in their world is supported by technology at all levels, whether it be plumbing, medicine, or electricity. Their prayers are answered every second of every day; it’s just that they’ve grown so accustomed to the slavery with which we’ve bound the universe that they don’t ask the prayers any more. When they do pray, they are answered by technology and Science, and like their poor brethren, are too blind to realize that their prayers also fell on proper timing. Had they made the same prayer 10 years sooner, we might not have had the machines we do now, or the ambulances with expensive medications around every corner. Prayer does not change things. It falls onto the deaf ears of a churning universe that knows nothing of our presence. When coincidence intervenes and someone is saved, the rich ignore their surroundings and their education and praise the skies. It is as if god is their servant, and can be made to work the weekend by a little tearful bribe. If god knows all things before their time, of what consequence is prayer? It seems unlikely that we can change the knowledge of an infinite god by sending thoughts in his direction.
At least the poor people see god as like them. He is fickle and can be persuaded. The god of the rich confirms their arrogance as to why their society is elevated; they are the best, the brightest, and of course god has blessed them with riches. He is all powerful and his dictates final. What blissful confirmation of this arrogance it is to suggest that they can change the mind of an unchanging being. They want whatever it is they’re praying for, therefore it must be the right thing. God is no fool, and delivers. Then again, sometimes he doesn’t, but we ignore the silence and tell ourselves that the answer was “no.”
Maybe a better sticker would say “Prayer Changes Things, if We Only Pretend the Non-Answers Never Happened.”
