Does Prayer Work?
I have already set out my views on whether or not prayer works in a previous post entitled “Carol and God vs Mike”. Now it seems that God (of all people) decided to put the question to practical application in that Injun school shooting (yeah I know I’ve mentioned it before but it has so many good angles.) A new story I was reading on it says that one of the teachers actually began praying aloud after the shooting started. Let’s see or not whether prayer worked in this instance:
“God be with us. God help us,” 15-year-old Ashley Lajeunesse heard Rogers say after she told students to hide as gunman Jeff Weise fired through a window and marched into the room.Â
“He walked up to that teacher with the shotgun, and he pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire,” said Chongai’la Morris, 14.
Hallelujah! Praise God, prayer works! The story continues with
“Then he pulled out his pistol, and he shot her three times in the side and once in the face.”Â
DOH!
My point here is not to make fun of the fact that this lady got shot. . . . Well ok, kind of it is. But my other point is that people sometimes read too much into these things. If the kid would have had only one shotgun and it didn’t go off after the woman prayed people would have said it was Divine Intervention and you know what? They would have been wrong. Sometimes guns just jam. Else why would God stop the shotgun but not the pistol? Hmmmm. Just to give me something to blog about?
Maybe God was angry with the girl!
Did you see the episode of The Family Guy where Meg says “God, kill me now”, and suddenly you see a red dot on her forehead and the camera pans up really high and shows God on a cloud aiming down with a sniper rifle? I love that one!
I liked the one where death came over to kill Peter and ended up hurting his ankle
Now hold on a second, she was praying, “God be with us.” And he was. Kid came up, and the shotgun jammed. I guarantee you that when that happened God was yelling, “RUN, BITCH, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, GET SOME HELP!” and she just wasn’t listening. And I bet that if God let her into heaven, he gave her the room by the noisy ice machine.
You could argue that the woman wasn’t looking for divine intervention. Religion asks you to deliver your soul into the Lord’s hands through prayer so that heaven will be attainable after death. She may have been praying so that she would receive entrance into heaven, for herself or anyone near her. Who knows though? I’m amazed everyday by the things that happen, both cruel and kind. I don’t believe in divine intervention, but there are people that do.
She said “God help us” and while that can mean a lot of different things, given the context I think she was talking about specific intervention at that moment. But regardless I think it’s funny that most people aren’t particularly religious until their either dying or coming. Coming or going?
I guess it makes more sense to holler out “OH GOD!” rather than “OH RANDOM FORTUITOUS ACCUMULATION OF EVENTS THAT WERE CONDUSIVE TO THE BEGINNING OF CARBON BASED LIFE FORM!”
Stating “God be with us, God help us” could be a call for intervention, but it could also be a request to make it go quickly and as painlessly as possible. If I had a gun to my head, I would be saying God help me, as in please don’t let me feel a thing.
And I am religious when I’m coming
“God help us!”
God: Wait. . . It’s fourth down. . .
I prefer save me Jebus!!!
Seriously, I also think the shotgun jamming was God giving her a chance and she just got greedy.
“Good. Now that God jammed the weapon I can just park my fat ass here and let him wrap things up. I wonder what they’re serving in the cafeteria today.”
I think the shotgun jamming was the kid not knowing what he was doing and loading it wrong. Mechanics, not divination. He sure knew how to use the pistol.
Huh? What? Waddi miss???
He probably short-stroked it.
Heh heh. Short-stroke.
Another tsunami likely in Inodonesia, bigger earhquake, same fault line. They’re running their dots off over there!
Jeesh God, a little sensitivity please?
An Old Man once told me: “Sometimes, prayer DOES work.” I think he’s right.
Dostoevsky addressed this in “The Brothers Karamazov”. He had one character (Smerdyakov) point out that although the New Testement says that if you had the faith the size of a grain of a mustard seed then you could simply say “move” and the mountains would move. But that of all the billions of people on this planet we never see mountains move, so that if what Jesus said were true then none of us on this planet have faith, save perhaps one monk in the wilderness.
The point is that if none of us apparantly has even the faith of a mustard seed then the point of effecting change through prayer is pretty much moot.
Just kidding on that whole Indonesian earthquake thing today. It’s good to know that I still got it!
You know it’s been a long day when it takes two reading to figure out what mexi means by running their dots off. I need sleep
Ok God, was it really necessary for you to get an email addy at dammit.com??? Not really one for subtlety are you?
I thought I was the one asking the fucking questions here….Excuse me…. Do you mind? Can I be in charge for a little while ?
People with a grain of faith like the mountains where they are, thank you. And if you want to move them, all you need is a little faith and a moderate sized nuke.
Nukes for Jesus!
You know how usually your own farts don’t smell that bad to you? I just ripped one that made me gag, and I think it curled the formica on my desk.
Just felt like sharing.
I love the line “I’ve already set out my views on whether or not prayer works.”
hahaha… that’s just funny to me.
If I wasn’t lazy I would find a good article I recently read on this very subject. But since I am lazy..
HEAVY METAL 4 LIFE!
Dude, that is so meddle. And if it wasn’t for those damn kids I’d have gotten away with it!
I guess it makes more sense to holler out “OH GOD!” rather than “OH RANDOM FORTUITOUS ACCUMULATION OF EVENTS THAT WERE CONDUSIVE TO THE BEGINNING OF CARBON BASED LIFE FORM!”
I prefer, “oh, Chemical Chance!”, for short. 🙂