Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Jesus made me do it!

The National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional as it represents a governmental endorsement of religion. Past that, it's also something that Yeshua found distasteful. Personally, I've always hated public prayer. Hated it when I was a Christian, probably more than I do now, because of this verse:

"And whenever you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to stand in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they will be seen by people. I tell you with certainty, they have their full reward! But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees from the hidden place will reward you." Matthew 6:5-6

So a judge, who actually read the constitution, decided that the National Day Of Prayer was unconstitutional, and now all of Texas' political leaders' panties are in a twist. "They can't take prayer away from us!!!BLAHBLAHBLAH!!!" I wonder if it will ever dawn on them that no one is trying to take anything away from them, but it's just not the government's place to endorse it. I also wonder if it will ever dawn on them that two hands engaged in labor are more useful that a million clasped in prayer. But whatever, pray your little heart out, Rick Perry. Whatever gets those votes, which is what this is all about anyway. If you ask any of them if they think there's any advantage in praying in public vs. privately, I'm sure they would all say that they believe god hears their private prayers just as well. So why do they insist on being "hypocrites?" Yeshua's words, not mine...well, both of ours I guess.

I'm not terribly concerned either way, just seems like a waste for our political leaders to be spending their time and energy on something like this, instead of the thousands of people unemployed, or underemployed, or starving, or uninsured, etc. in our country/state/county/city/neighborhood.

I was thinking about blogging about how much I hate the concept of tipping today, but maybe I'll do that tomorrow. I'm so full of RAGE!!!

Also, the final Quiet Company mini-doc is up at Quiet Company Music Dot Com.

8 comments:

  1. I hate tipping too, so I'm looking forward to your rant on that topic. :) I actually once had a waiter, who was terrible and rude, hence the small tip, tell a group of us we didn't give him enough. I was pretty speechless.

    When I was in high school and they prayed over the intercom at football games (small Texas town, what can you do?) I always thought that if there was a God, he probably had a lot more important things on his mind than a football game in Podunkville, Texas.

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  2. I like tips because Travis is a waiter and his tips pay our rent!

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  3. Leander ISD gave students excused absences on Day of Silence because students were "offended" by day of silence.

    I thought about sending them a letter asking that they allow people offended by Day of prayer to skip school, but then I remembered that those hypocritical bullies are my future employers and just got real sad.

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  4. When I was in sixth grade my family got the internet, and I realized I hate the concept of paying for music. :)

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  5. I wonder if the criterion used to deem the 'National Day of Prayer' unconstitutional would also apply to Thanksgiving. I can't see why it wouldn't.

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  6. Good point, but we could always say we're thankful to/for anything/anyone.

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  7. Yeah, most public displays of religion have always struck me as pretty desperate. "Look at me, I'm like you! I'm good!" If you really, sincerely believe something (which I theorize most people really do not) why does it seem like the believers go through so much trouble to prove their belief to everyone else? Isn't it supposed to be more of a personal thing?

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  8. Taylor,
    Sure, but if we're going to play that game we could interpret 'prayer' in a similarly broad way. Choosing to interpret Thanksgiving in a non-religious way is certainly possible, but it won't really be in line with the history or original conception of it.

    Teresa,
    I agree that many public displays of prayer can come off as self-aggrandizing, and no doubt desperate. I think it's probably also true that most people within the contemporary church don't have a sincere or at the very least, a well understood set of Christian beliefs. Even so, I don't think that the defensiveness about religion in the public square is really about proving a belief to anyone else. I think it's more of a concern that religious people, especially Christians and Jews, are slowly being marginalized by an increasingly secular culture. Sometimes the reaction is warranted, and sometimes it isn't. I think I agree with Taylor that the national public day of prayer was probably politically motivated, which I find extremely frustrating.
    Religious belief obviously has an extremely important personal element to it, but until relatively recently it has never been considered a merely personal belief. One of the few things Sam Harris does well is point out that beliefs motivate our actions. If someone said they believed in God, but that that belief didn't have any bearing on how they live their public lives, I would strongly suspect that they didn't really believe in God, or didn't understood what the word 'God' meant.

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