Ray claims that the only person who doesn't pray is the person who isn't experiencing trouble.
Show me someone who says he"s never prayed, and I will show you someone who has never been in severe turbulence.
Ray, I'm right here. If I haven't experienced severe turbulence, I don't know who has. My own illness, my husband's MS, my MIL's heart failure, my own mother's health problems, job loss, money woes, mental illnesses among family members and friends . . . other than natural disasters, name a turbulence, I've ridden it out.
And I have not prayed.
Not once. Not for a moment. You know why? I don't believe in the sky daddy, Ray. Praying to a god, any god, would be like praying to my shoes. A pointless waste of time that won't change a thing. You know what I've done instead? Things that improved the situation or improved my mood. Praying won't do either, so I haven't done it.
What I think is truly odd is who did pray. Jesus.
Jesus went to a mountain to pray . . . Jesus continued all night in prayer.
Wut?
Why would Jesus, who is God, pray to God? He prayed to himself. Stop and think about that for a second. That makes no sense at all, at least not in the supplicatory sense of prayer, the begging of favors and mercy. Who begs themselves for anything?
Then Jesus failed to answer his own prayers to himself.
Really, the more I read the Bible and actually pay attention to what's in it, the less sense it makes.
Disregarding the passages wherein Jesus asks that this cup pass from him (praying for something that benefits yourself), most traditional Jewish prayers are exaltations of God. So if Jesus was praying traditional Jewish prayers, he wasn't so much saying, "Please, Me, do me this favor," he was more saying, "You know, Me, I'm really great. Thanks for being so great, Me."
ReplyDeleteIn my past life as a theist I had extreme difficulty coping with stressful things and resorting to prayer only made it worse. When I came to the realisation that there was no sky-daddy and started solving problems with a rational mindset it was extremely liberating and satisfying, not to mention things got fixed instead of wasting time blubbering to Gezus.
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