Monday, May 12, 2008

Back to Prayer

Sorry for being absent for so long but the world is no easy place and my time has been unfairly occupied by my responsibilities. First to iterate my stance on prayer, prayer can be a wonderful thing but it can also be destructive to people. Prayer when used appropriately can achieve great things. It has been known to lift people's spirits and in doing so help heal those who are ill more rapidly. This is the way that prayer should be used.

Unfortunately our society has gotten prayer happy. They choose to pray to a very busy deity for all of their silly little problems rather taking care of things themselves. The most irritating of all these prayers involves catholics praying to patron saints for help. While you may say they aren't praying to god per se, the idea behind it is still the same. I have found myself becoming rather irritated whenever I hear someone praying to saint anthony to find something they lost when they should be out looking for it. Or praying to Saint Christopher for safe travel before they drive somewhere. It feels like people are passing responsibility for their lives onto anyone possible, even dead people or deities.

An-arkism has a rather relaxed look on prayer except under these circumstances. Prayer should be used to lift spirits, not for personal gain. Praying for personal gain shows the same selfishness that mankind is surrounded by and may very well be leading us to another disaster if god has checked in on our progress recently. I find it difficult to believe that our behavior as a society is any better than it was just before the great flood.
Deror