For Those Who Pray: God Doesn’t Care and Neither Do You
You’ve certainly heard this story before:
A huge storm is coming to town. All the news reports tell citizens to evacuate! Run for their lives! This storm is going to wipe out everything. People begin to flee. Except this one guy. He stays put.
His neighbors say, “Hey, man, you better get out of here. You could die. Come with us, we have room in the car.”
He refuses. “No, no. God will save me.”
The storm comes and the town floods. Some people come by the man’s house in a boat. “Hey, man, come aboard. We have room. We’ll get you to safety.”
He refuses. “No, no. God will save me.”
The flood fills the streets and his house. The man is forced to climb to his roof where the wind and rain beat down on him. Below, he watches all his belongings wash away in the raging waters. A FEMA helicopter comes. The rescue workers say, “Hey, man, grab hold of the line, we’ll lift you to safety.”
He refuses. “No, no. God will save me.”
The waters reach the roof. The man is washed away. He drowns.
In heaven, the man meets God and asks him, “God, why didn’t you save me from the storm? I prayed and prayed that you would.”
God replies, “You fucking idiot. There were the news warnings, the car, the boat, the helicopter. You had every opportunity to be saved. What more did you want?”
We see this sentence a lot: After every mass shooting, we’re inundated with responses calling for prayers for the victims. I’m tired of seeing that sentence because it means that yet another mass shooting has occurred in the United States of America, the greatest fucking country God ever made. And it means that more people are choosing to pray for a solution instead of realizing that the power to solve this problem does not rest with God but with us. We can pray all day every day until the sun burns out but by not taking legislative action and having real, honest, hard discussions about how to curb the ease in which almost anyone can slaughter lives with the pulling of a single trigger, we are refusing the news warnings, the car, the boat and the helicopter.
There’s nothing wrong with praying. It makes us feel better. It’s something to do when we are completely helpless that allows us to feel a little less helpless. I get it. Been there, done that. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray. I’m saying that we should do more than just pray.
I don’t have the answer to the gun/mass shooting problem in America, the greatest fucking country God ever made. But there is one out there. There’s a solution to all life’s problems. And if we are to believe in God, then we have to admit that God gave us all the tools we need to find that solution. Prayer ain’t one of them. Discussion, science, reasoning. Those are the tools. Prayer is none of those things.
When a loved one gets ill, it’s OK to pray while they undergo medical treatment. Do not expect a recovery from prayer alone. When you’re faced with a big test at school or certification for work, it’s OK to pray you do well while having studied your ass off. Do not expect to pass with prayer alone.
When you see a mass shooting and your only instinct is to pray, you are proving that God doesn’t care about us because it just keeps happening—and most recently on Ash Wednesday, and you are proving that you don’t care about your fellow human because you’re either too evil or too stupid to recognize more must be done.