Is God a Democracy?
I firmly believe people are well intentioned. We really want to be good and do the right thing. One thing that helps to guide us through life are our beliefs: Who is in charge? What does this all mean? Why are we here?
It is a faith in our own answers to these questions that guides us through decisions in what to do with our life. It also acts as a filter on our experiences that colors our perception of those experiences. We’re stubborn creatures, and we’re particularly good at attributing the cause of an event to make it fit within our personal faith structure.
- “Haitians made a pact with the devil, therefore there was a giant earthquake there.”
- “You insulted a man last month so Karma is paying you back with financial woes.”
- “I helped an old woman cross the street, so God is rewarding me with this job promotion.”
- “We prayed that the police would find that girl, and they did. Prayer works!”
A particularly interesting faith-based behavior I’ve taken note of lately is that of the last example — prayer. I can fully get behind the “let’s stay on the righteous path” or “rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub” kind of prayer, but I have issues with prayer whose intent is to actually affect change in the world. This hits the point of the title of this post — do practitioners of this type of prayer really think that God is a democracy?
For example, I have a friend who was traveling. She asked her friends on Facebook to pray for a safe flight.
Really? So without your friends begging for your safe passage over the Pacific, God would smoteth that 757 deep into thine salty waters in a ball of hellfire? Do rational people actually believe that this is how their all powerful God works?
Another example is praying for a diseased person to be well again. I’m all for lending support to people or families going through difficult times, and donating to organizations who are advancing the science of wellness. But again — without your votes of prayer, God will decide that not enough people care about this sick person’s well being and let them wither away in a hospital bed? Or that now more than ten people have gathered in a circle in a church basement, joined hands, and asked for the sick to be healed (visual: blue beams of light emanating from each person’s head rising to the heavens in a majestic column of Want), so he is now obligated to banish the tumor from the sick person’s brain. Really?
If there is an all powerful supreme being sitting on a cloud somewhere with angels brushing his golden beard, I think the last thing he will do is to run his universe as an episode of American Idol, with only the most voted-on causes moving on to the next round and everything else getting booted from the show.
Please let me know in the comments if I have completely missed a crucial point in understanding this phenomenon.
Harris said,
January 21, 2010 @ 11:12 am
Great entry Z. Glad to see you writing again.
=AA=
Don said,
January 21, 2010 @ 11:47 am
You’re a smart man, Sark.
I can’t wait until the Super Bowl, when the winning team will certainly have a few players thanking God for the victory. Because God not only cares who wins the Super Bowl, he plays a part in assisting the winning team to achieve that victory. Oh… and conversely… he hates the losing team… and wanted them to lose. And maybe even go to hell.
mimi said,
January 21, 2010 @ 8:59 pm
Good questions. I ask them, too. Let’s see if I can explain how I see prayer. (As a prior disclosure it is only fair to say that I am a pray-er and a Christian). First off, I agree completely that my faith is the filter that colors my experiences. After a lifetime of immersion in the Christian pond, I’m saturated by that world view. Our experiences lead us to a world view. There’s nothing to be done about that. It happens to absolutely everyone, no exceptions.
My experiences have caused me to question my assumptions about prayer. I used to think it was important to ask God to make my life and the lives of those I love smooth and pleasant. I think now that indicated that I distrusted God to take care of us adequately, especially in times of suffering or struggle. It is comfortable for us rich westerners to believe that God loves us best, because we are rich, well-nourished and healthy. What else could our wealth and health indicate? Certainly the corrollary to that assumption is that if we are poor or sick, God doesn’t love us so much. Who would want to be associated with such a god? It doesn’t take a brilliant theologian to see the problem here. What I notice is that the same stuff happens to people who love God and to the people who ignore God. God actually treats everybody the same. When it rains, we all get wet and everybody’s garden grows.
So why pray at all? Probably different faiths will explain this differently. One of my good friends is a Buddhist and we often talk about the same things with completely different words. She talks about “tanglen” and I talk about “carrying the burdens of others”. In practice, they look the same. I can only use the vocabulary I know to explain this, so feel free to ask me what I mean. My main assumptions about prayer these days are
1). that God loves all of creation;
2). that God desires to make creation whole and healthy (and will succeed, no exceptions);
3). that suffering, while painful, is not an indication of God’s displeasure;
4). that God shares our suffering;
5). that God will help us learn to love others the same way God loves them.
When I pray now, I mostly stay quiet. It seems to me that the function of prayer is more about inviting God to shape my way of being so that I can also be one who loves all creation, who cooperates in the growth of wholeness and health, who can bear to be present to someone who is suffering. I also like to pray the Lord’s Prayer (or The Our Father). I used to just recite it (fast) as a rote prayer. Now I linger over the phrases: “Our Father…… the one who is everywhere and always present……may your name be held holy in all the earth…..may your way of doing things begin to happen here….just like they do in your immediate presence. Give us this day our daily bread ….. especially to those people who have no bread…. and make me generous to share with them…” and so on. When I do pray specifically for someone’s needs (Jesus instructed his followers to bring all their needs to God.) I’m more focused on God drawing their attention to God’s activity on their behalf than on trying to suggest a course of action for God. I believe that God can use any situation to help us grow in our love for others and for God. Often as I pray for them, I learn to love them better and I am sometimes moved to accompany them in some way.
What I’ve noticed in my years of church affiliation is that we mostly pray for things that seem out of our control. That’s why prayers for physical healing are so popular. I have seldom heard people pray for help with things they think they can manage on their own. Now I believe that one of the big lessons of prayer is that it is safe to give up the need for control. We, ultimately, cannot even control our next breath or heart beat. I’m learning that it is important to pray about things I think I do control and to admit, in front of God, that I really don’t know the best thing to do and to ask for help in seeing how my actions can be brought in line with God’s desire for loving and whole relationships on earth. How might prayers for the Super Bowl change if this were the motive of the prayer?
That’s all for now. I may come back with another thought or two.
thenobot said,
February 3, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A0-u85aAYg