My world is almost normal...
"The Pray's the Thing"
by Seth
Brown
Today's quote: "As long as there are final exams, there will always be
prayer in
school." I've always thought that this made a lot of sense, because we
want God to do
things for us. We want him to help us get good grades, win football games,
defeat armies,
win the lottery, and buy me a Mercedes-Benz. (My friends all drive
Porsches, I must make
amends.) Sadly, there are reasons why he won't fulfill any of these
requests.
If God bought us each a Mercedes-Benz, the American automotive
industry would collapse,
and parking would be even harder to find than it is already. If he helped
everyone win the
lottery, they'll all have to split the prize and everyone won't even get
enough to buy
another ticket. Then they'd lose money because since they all won, they'd
all want to play
again, thus starting a vicious cycle.
God has special rules for helping armies in combat, which is that you
aren't allowed to
fight with conventional weapons. If you have siege engines, God will
ignore you, but if you
run around a city blowing horns, he'll knock down the walls. If you have
good armor and a
sword, God will ignore you, but if you're wearing some animal-skin and
carrying a
slingshot, he'll smite your enemy. In today's modern world, since we have
troops wielding
high-powered guns, he's going to ignore us. But I've got a hunch that if
we send a dozen
patriotic Americans into battle equipped with plastic spoons and bowls of
pudding to fling
at the enemy, God will make us invincible.
Football has always been a very religious game, and not just because
some of the
players seem to think that they are God. Many teams have a brief prayer in
the locker room
before the game. And often, you'll hear victorious teams thanking Jesus
for blessing them
with a triumph. But for some reason it stops being religious for the team
that lost, since
you never hear: "Yeah, I would have had that touchdown... if Jesus hadn't
made
me fumble."
As for grades, God actually did help everyone out a few years ago,
during the great
academic prayer rush of the 90's. The SAT's were revamped to raise
everyone's score, and
schools across the nation gave out more A's then ever before. Of course,
the grade
inflation hasn't really fixed the problem, so God in his infinite wisdom
will probably
think twice before trying something like that again.
In spite of all this though, people keep praying to God. Supposedly,
the one thing that
God will do for us is grant us some sort of salvation, letting us play in
his cloudy
mansion for eternity after we die. Since unlike football games and grades,
we'll never know
if he's going to follow through on the afterlife rewards thing until it's
far too late,
it's a pretty slick deal for God. Still, people flock to the churches in
droves, probably
for the same reason so many people play the lottery; the odds may not be
in your favor, but
it's a hell of a prize if you win. Er...a heaven of a prize. The point is
that eternity is
a really long time, so many people try to appease God just in case.
I'm an agnostic, so I don't worry too much about appeasing
God. (Incidentally, a fun
thing to do when people ask you what agnostic means is to reply, "I don't
know.") However,
if God made man, why didn't he just program us to do what he wanted? And
if he created us,
and knows everything that's going to happen, he shouldn't be unpleased
with anything that
we do even if it is supposedly free will. However, for the purpose of
argument, let's just
set these concerns aside for a moment and pretend that we have a reason to
attempt to
appease God.
How the heck do we do that? The guy's omnipotent, he can have
everything he wants. We
used to kill things and say we did it for him, sort of like those cats
that drag dead mice
into your living room. "Look, God, I killed this goat and I'm burning it
to show you how
much I love you!" God wasn't impressed. Then we thought we'd try to kill
people who didn't
worship him in the same way we did, and jihads and crusades were
popular. "Look, God, I
killed this guy and I'm burning him to show you how much I love you!" God
wasn't
impressed. Then we thought we should try killing something else, saying,
"Look, God, I
killed this--"
God interrupted. "STOP!"
Man took note. "Stop?"
God continued. "YES! STOP KILLING THINGS! I MADE THEM FOR A REASON,
AND IT PISSES ME OFF WHEN YOU KILL THEM."
Man inquired, "How then shall we appease you, oh Lord? Perhaps a
sacrifice more worthy
of your--"
God thundered, "JUST STOP KILLING THINGS! YOU CAN ALL GET TOGETHER
AND SING OFF-KEY, FOR ALL I CARE, AS LONG AS YOU LEAVE MY STUFF
ALONE."
Man thanked God profusely, and decided to spend once a week gathering
to sing off-key
about what a great fellow God was. It was a definite improvement, because
the time was now
spent butchering music instead of meat. Still, the constant atonal
chanting doesn't really
do anything positive for God, but just keeps us from being dumb for a few
hours each
week. If you really want to aim for the Mercedes, you've got to make God
happy, which
entails doing something to make the world a better place. And if there is
no God, then we
may as well try to improve this world since we aren't going anywhere
better. In either
case, everyone can contribute in some way, be it by creating world peace
or something
as simple as baking me a cheesecake. I'll do my part by ending this column
here.