THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE

I’ve been burned out lately. Hell, that’s not quite accurate; I’ve been burned out for several weeks. Stuck in a rapidly going nowhere job I’ve been getting screwed over and taken advantage of to an alarming degree. It’s physically and mentally exhausting me. And my pathetic excuse for health isn’t helping any.

So what do I do to make things better?

In the past, I would have prayed. And prayed. And prayed some more. I would not have gotten an answer but I would have kept on praying anyway. I would have had other people praying for me. I would have had spirit-filled super-preachers praying and laying hands on me. I would never have gotten an answer to any of it but I would have sworn to you wholeheartedly that prayer works. I would have been totally sincere.

But I look back at that now and all I think is, “What an asshole!”

I knew it didn’t work. I knew I wasn’t getting any answers but I would never admit that. You admit that, you’ve lost your faith. Without faith god can’t do anything for you. It’s amazing how readily eager Christians are to make excuses for god’s lack of performance. Christians are supposed to be able to speak to mountains and have them move with only as much faith as a mustard seed. Christians are supposed to be able to do greater things than Jesus did. He wasn’t subject to the laws of physics, why are we?

My particular branch of Christianism usually prefered the you don’t have enough faith excuse. God’s failure to deliver was always your fault. Because you had a doubt. Because you said something wrong. Because you indulged in some sin. Because you didn’t pray hard enough. You didn’t offer sufficient praise. You didn’t put your full tithe in the collection plate. Whatever it was, you somehow tied god’s hands so he couldn’t get the answer to you.

On the other hand, I also spent time amongst the Baptists. Their favorites were, “It’s not god’s time,” “God said, NO!,” or the ever popular, “God only promised to supply our needs not our wants.” I never much cared for any of those because they directly contradicted scripture.

It’s only in looking back at it years later that I can see how absurd my beliefs really were. So many crises came and went without an answer from god. But I kept praising him anyway. He was just teaching me to trust and depend on him. Even when I got sued for not paying my bills after a series of financial disasters wiped us out, why, I was just leaning on my own understanding instead of seeking the will of god.

God never helped me out of any of these messes but I kept on praying.

Obviously I survived. I managed to solve one thing after another because I had to. I managed to get the money from one earthly source or another. I always gave god the credit, however. Even though he had nothing to do with it. It always struck me as odd how god was supplying my needs by my own hard work. That’s sort of what happens even if you don’t ask for his help.

Even now, my wife and my former SDA friend give god the credit for the SSI check my wife gets every month. Funny, it seems to me the $4000 lawyer was the one who won her case for us. And the money comes from the good ol’ US of A government which, by it’s Constitution, has nothing to do with god.

I haven’t prayed for over ten years now. Disasters far worse than anything before have come and gone. And I have survived them all. The only thing that’s different is that I didn’t waste my time and energy praying to a god who was never going to answer, I just put my mind to work and found a solution.

The scary thing about that is simply that that is precisely what I was doing all along but I wasn’t taking any credit for my own actions good or bad. It was all the will of god. Exactly the same results whether or not you call on god.

The reson is simple: there is no god.

This entry was posted on 14. October 2008 at 02:41 and is filed under wild guesses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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