PRAYER IS ABOUT TREATING INACTION AS DOING
SOMETHING
Praying for somebody you will never meet or who you cannot help or won’t help
such as popes and politicians often do is clearly hypocrisy. Then it is clearly
only about feeling good about doing nothing. It is using a tragedy for selfish
hypocritical piety.
Some people get the same feeling from saying a prayer as they do from having done something good. They may pray a lot because it is this buzz they want. They work for the buzz indirectly but they still work for it. Others will not get that feeling and hardly ever pray.
Prayer is bias for anything that cannot be tested is bias
by default. Even when you do not get what you ask for you are told the
prayer just worked in a way that was best for you. It is too biased to be
about anything other than feelings. It is not right to use the suffering
of others to make yourself feel good by praying for them.
Prayer is for many - if not all - just an attempt to feel good about doing
nothing. Even the believer has to admit that prayer is really doing nothing for
another person. God knows what is best. We might pray for healing. And it may
come. Did God answer the prayer then? That depends on his motive. Did he do it
to answer the prayer or did he do it just because it was the right thing to do?
If he did it because he was asked, then it was not because it was right. Maybe
he did it both because he was asked and because it was right? That means he
refused to do it entirely because it was right. In so far as God does not do it
because it is right he is acting amorally if not immorally. As he claims to be
good, he would be showing he is not perfectly good. Then prayer is saying, "I
don't care if you are evil or not do what I ask!" How is that supposed to help
us become more virtuous. No wonder there is nothing remarkable about the virtue
of most believers. Any virtue they have is there in spite of their faith and
their prayers.
Those who are encouraged to appreciate prayers are being manipulated.
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one
Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first
commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31,
King James Bible).
Jesus said that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength
(Mark 12:29-31 which is commanded by the depraved prophet Moses in Deuteronomy
6). That is, God is to be loved wholly. We do not love him most and give the
rest of our love to others. We must love him alone and love others for his sake.
You pray them only for God's honour. If you ask for help for another, you are
really just asking God to do what he wants be it helping or not.
To love God with all your heart means to hate sin with all your heart as well.
Prayer is opening up to this principle - it is merely consenting with sincerity of
heart to love God totally. That is what really matters. That is the true meaning
of prayer - and the only meaning. To pray for health is a sin unless you are
asking for the health solely that you can serve God. If you ask for health
without much concern for God, really you are telling him that health means more
to you than him. You are not praying but insulting. You are trying to manipulate
him. Manipulation is violent in the sense that it tries to impose your will on
others and trick them into thinking that is not happening. Freedom and truth go
together. The happy person who feels free but because of a religion's lies is
not free at all. He is not allowed to be his own person and is therefore a
victim of violence.
Prayer then is really doing nothing for yourself or others. It is all about God.
Prayer urges people to sacrifice themselves on the altar of religion by being
eaten up by hatred. The prayers of believers are not motivated by this intention
so they are not prayers to God but to the image they have made of God. Prayer is
not really about genuinely helping people.
Those who pray because they feel it triggers a motivation to help others are
really praying to a good idol they have invented. It is the abuse of prayer that
is doing this not prayer. And if their minds and bodies were not programmed by
nature to respond that way, the prayers would not motivate them. It is the kind of
people they that is helping - not the praying. It is their belief that prayer
triggers feelings of compassion for others that is helping. It is not prayer as
such. It is degrading how religion stresses prayer so much when it is worthless
in itself.
What's wrong with feeling good about doing nothing? It makes you feel better
about not trying to help. No wonder most Christians are weak on doing anything
impressively good for others.
If you cannot help say your sick friend, you can help somebody else in their
honour. Maybe give a homeless person a few pence or something. But do not pray.
It is not right to feel you have done good when you have not. That is feeding
self-righteousness and self-deception. Do real good and feel good about that.
That is the real way to respect yourself and the other person.
Some Christians say that when disaster happens then you must pray as if only God
can do anything at all about it. Then you must act as if only you can do it and
as if God will do nothing. That is the most shameless admission of the
uselessness of God and prayer I have ever heard. It is about how you feel not
how you help.