Praying, against all odds

In his book, “Mortality,” Christopher Hitchens, the famous latter-day atheist, devotes the better part of a chapter to a discussion of prayer. When many of his multitudes of friends found out that he had the cancer that would eventually kill him, Hitchens says they let him know they were praying for him even though it might offend him.

Hitchens is tempted to write these folks back: “Praying for what?” a good number of them, he knows, are as much, or more, concerned for his eternal salvation than for his actual recovery.

The effect of prayer on one’s fate in the afterlife cannot be determined, of course, as no one has ever reported back, but Hitchens cites a 2006 study—“the most comprehensive investigation of the subject ever conducted,” he calls it (see below)—that found no correlation between prayer and a patient’s improvement. It did, however, find a negative correlation, in that the person prayed for often felt worse, because he thought he had let his petitioners down. And if he should happen to get better, Hitchens muses, wouldn’t it convince the pious that their prayers had been answered? The thought depresses him even more. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Prayer, besides being possibly un-therapeutic, is also self-contradictory, as Hitchens notes. Presumably the devout regard their deity as all-powerful and all-knowing; if so, isn’t prayer blasphemous if it beseeches this being to change its mind?

And isn’t even a humble prayer, along the lines of “Let my wishes be Thine,” while maybe not negative in character, at least a little redundant? Why ask God to do something He’s going to do anyway? In this case we pray to God in order to praise Him, say the prayerful. But the God who needs constant admiration and thanks is one of the many gods he doesn’t believe in, Hitchens says.

What’s the big deal about praying, the reader might ask. What harm can it do? Hitchens’ answer:

“The emptiness of prayer is almost the least of it. Beyond that minor futility, the religion which treats its flock as a credulous plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible.”

Or believe in the possible, the praying individual will undoubtedly say. But then you can’t argue with such a person—you can only pray for him.  

(The study Hitchens mentions is “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer.” Look online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567.

Stairway to Heaven

A recent poll of self-identified Republicans, conducted by the Daily Kos, asked the question: “Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?”
Sixty-seven percent said that Jesus was the only way; fifteen percent said there might be another way, and eighteen percent weren’t sure. I’m wondering about that eighteen percent. Were they not sure about the proper way to get to Heaven, or were they maybe not sure about the whole idea of Heaven itself? I’ll assume the former, while wishing for the latter.
Two thousand and three people participated in the poll, which means that, at most, about 360 people might have answered: What a stupid question! You’re assuming that I subscribe to the inane and idiotic notion of Heaven. Do you think I’m a child?
Polls can be very revealing, but they seldom tell the whole story. In this case, they can only hint at how depressingly inchoate or infantile most people’s beliefs are. Some corollary questions might have been useful or interesting. Such as:
What will this Heaven be like? What will you do there? And if you’re bored with this life, why do you want another that will go on forever?

Hell's bells

A megastar pastor and author of a best-selling book about hell was in Music City last week to deliver a sermon on his view of God and His fiery furnace.

Hell, says Rob Bell, whose Love Wins has won him fame and fortune (it’s second on the New York Times bestseller list), but also the wrath of the fire-and-brimstone set, may not be irrevocable. God can give people a second chance, in Bell’s eschatology, although He does fell the need to punish them for a spell, for purification’s sake.

But “a God who tortures people in hell forever can’t be trusted and is not good,” Bell says.

The argument raises some interesting and pressing questions: Can a part-time torturer be called “good”? What conduct should one strive for in hell, in order to earn a reprieve? If we can spring ourselves from hell, can we also fumble our way out of heaven? And, more to the point:

Has everyone lost their mind?

Here we are, a decade into the 21st century, and still the idiotic and monstrous notion of hell, which has made life a hell on earth for so many millions, has not relinquished its hold on our imaginations. Like babies, we conjure demons in our dreams and boogeymen under our beds, and then try to explicate such infantile fancies.

Our speculations about hell—its design, its curriculum—are as senseless as the visions of a lunatic. And our debates—so earnest, so learned—about just what species of ogre God is, must set the Almighty, if He’s listening, to either roaring with laughter or trembling with rage. Sometimes He must think that a really big bonfire wouldn’t be a bad idea.

We scratch God’s back…

Looking for Christ-inanity material in the local libes the other day, I picked up A Life God Rewards Devotional, published in 2002, a slim volume but chock-full of fodder for ridicule.

Author (he’s world-renowned!) Bruce Wilkinson kicks off with a preface, or “Invitation,” introducing his theme but mostly taking the opportunity to plug his other products. “I wrote A Life God Rewards to help people recapture the truth about the connection between what we do today and what God will do for us in eternity…If you haven’t read the book, I urge you to do so.”

The devotional I’m holding in my hands, he explains, is to take me further in my understanding and to live a life that will earn me “God’s ‘Well done!’” And toward this end, the world-renowned Mr. W. further urges me to “By all means pick up the companion tool, A Life God Rewards Journal…Also, be sure to take advantage of A Life God Rewards Bible Study and video seminar…”

“Join me on this joyful, life-changing journey today,” his Invitation concludes. (We’ll be wiser but poorer, after shelling out for all the necessary supplies.)

A real Introduction follows this, entitled “The Big Picture of Your Eternity,” and it turns out that this picture is so big that it requires three days to take it all in. (Day One: A Welcome Jolt; Day Two: The Keys That Unlock Forever; Day Three: Forever in Focus.)

The book’s body is divided into four weeks of seven days each—God rested on Sunday, but not our mentor, and neither does he advise us to. The short chapters have snappy titles: "Working in the Son", "Who Ate My Cheesecake?", "God’s Secret Service", "Hell Is No Party", etc.

On the subject of Hades, the author pulls no punches. “Hell is a place of torment without an exit,” he says. (I imagined a stalled elevator piping New-Age Gospel songs.) “People there are conscious, they can communicate, they feel pain and regret—and their condition will never change.” From this, he concludes “Life is short, but God is good.”

Merciful, too, because the little devotional ends a few pages after this, before I succumb to violent laughter and have to face the eternal flames prematurely.