The Real Meaning of Prayer

Do you pray? Yes? Well please take a moment and think about what you are doing. I won't discuss whether prayer works or not; let's say it does. So now...what are you really asking?

Some years ago I was taking a college course in American Literature and Mark Twain was required reading. As I perused the list of his works I came across a short work written during the Civil War.

The War Prayer

At the time I read it my son was 13 years old and participating in the Junior Olympics in Tae Kwon Do. He was to compete in Tulsa the next day. Being an on the fence believer at the time I often found myself praying. It seemed natural to pray for my son's success...until I read this work.

 It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. 

Then as now, patriotism was inextricably connected to god. The churches were filled with the loved ones of the soldiers fighting in the war.

And they prayed. They prayed for the success of their soldiers without a thought of what they were asking...just as I did when I asked for victory for my son.

But, as in Twain's story, two not one prayer is offered.

uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" 

When a mother asks for her son, victory over the other, she is also asking for the opponent's  defeat. . When the preachers stand before the congregants on Sunday morning and prays for the victory of 'our side' two prayers are said, not one. 

Something about that seems unchristian.

Original Sin

Considering the root of christianity is derived from an amoral god, can one be good with god?
-Alan Bombria (a friend)

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he ...practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not...

We are told from birth that we are sinners and evil doers. We are also told that we are made in the image of god. We are told we have free will and that we must choose to accept Jesus in order to get rid of the sin we got when we were created in god’s image.

“The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code."

This is an excerpt from John Galt's speech in the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and it deals with the Christian notion of original sin.

The longer version can be found here

Atheist Campaign

Similar to the bus campaign in London; 100 of these signs will be on Seatle buses beginning November. I'm sure it will get the christians in an uproar. However, the point is that the manger and the wisemen have had their time on the buses. It's about time we non-believers had the same opportunity.

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