Is anyone listening?
Does prayer work?
With Easter coming up the universe will be filled with billions of prayers. Do any of them help?
As the world plunges ever deeper into utter chaos and so much death all around us, my mother often asks why God doesn’t do something about it.
Not being very religious anymore, my approach over the years has shifted to view our existence more from a scientific perspective. I usually give my mom the same pat answer, “Because He gave us free will.” That’s what I was always taught in Catholic school and it’s the only answer I have because no one knows the answer. If you believe in an Almighty God; He created us and then cut us loose.
For the billions who hold strong religious beliefs there’s a deity “floating” around somewhere keeping an eye on us, I can’t prove or deny it, because there’s no way of knowing. If true, is this the same “Being” who also had a hand in creating the vastness of the universe? I shrug, because again we have no idea. That’s where the word faith fills in the gaps. There’s no way, in our wildest imaginations, can we or will we ever know how all this came about. At least while we’re still breathing.
When we die, do we just puff away? Or do we turn into energy and become part of the boundless universe? There’s only the one-way ticket find out.
In the meantime, getting back to my mother’s question. If there is a supreme being keeping a close watch on the people of Earth, and you’re a very religious person, then how come He (fill in whatever pronoun you like) doesn’t step in and stop all the madness from taking place? How come the trillions of prayers going His way don’t have an impact? First of all, this madness has been going on since the planet formed. For reasons that still escape me, evil has been working its dread beginning with the fictitious story of Adam and Eve and the snake.
Men have raged war as far back as history will show us, and I’m sure farther back than that. Men love to have power. Not to say there hasn’t been a fair share of women, but men are inherently stronger and loaded with testosterone and find the need to use that energy to take over countries and kill millions of innocent people in the process. And sadly, more people have likely died in the name of God, Allah, or any other title, than for any other reason.
We’re witnessing this mental instability with Putin raging war against Ukraine. Why? Likely just because he can. And his ego won’t allow him to back off. He kills thousands of his own soldiers and murders thousands of innocent Ukrainians who just want to go back home. Have a nice family dinner, shop, and see a movie. I’m sure a few million prayers have been said to end the nightmare, but they haven’t reached Putin yet.
In Mexico in 2022 there were over 30,000 (likely much more) murdered, about 85 a day. Lives taken by vile morons who see human beings as nothing but obstacles. They have zero regard for human life. The unfortunate people who have witnessed the heads of their neighbors, friends and family stuck to posts, entire families wiped out to merely send a message, haven’t had their prayers answered. Life in certain places in Mexico, if there is such a thing as hell, has risen to Earth’s surface to pluck people into its bowels. Not unlike our own inner cities.
Mexican executioners are never satiated for their need to feed their greed. They bring their lust for death to America’s borders and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans as well. They don’t blink about the lives they’re responsible for extermination. They just count the dollars and make more poison. There’s no guilt for the family and friends who morn and pray over the coffins of the lives lost that made them rich. If there is anything remotely like a netherworld, those are the ones I hope will end up setting permanent residence there along with Hitler and all the other evil beings of this world. If prayer will help, pray for that.
When it comes to natural disasters, that’s exactly what they are, natural. God or the supreme being didn’t say one day, “Let there be an earthquake because I feel like killing some people today.” The Turkey earthquake with nearly 50,000 dead is impossible to comprehend. The Haiti earthquake killed over three times the human souls. The numbers are staggering for our feeble minds to grasp. The same for the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 which took some 225,000 lives. No amount of prayer saved any of them. Though there’s been a lot of thanking God going on from the survivors of these natural events.
There’s agony taking place all around the globe every day. From our inner cities to Africa where entire villages are “cleansed.” To the woman being shoved in front of a train to four college students being brutally stabbed to death while sleeping. The world is a violent and deadly place.
I wish there were a way to effectively stop the mayhem but so far there is no remedy. This is the plate we were given and it’s up to us to clean it. On the upside, in the long-run, good has triumphed over evil. But the path to get there has been a bloody one.
I have very close friends and family, my mother being one, who place a lot on their faith. And that’s good. Because without that faith, it would make lives a lot uglier for many people.
As my mother always asks, why doesn’t God step in and stop all the bad things from happening? Because if there is a God, like billions believe, if he did step in and prevented all bad things, the world would be a very strange place. Because without bad, we wouldn’t know good. It’s just a painful process.
Hopefully a billion prayers can help this planet find peace.