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Will Getting Down on Our Knees Stop Climate Change?
It’s not hard to understand the attraction of seeking divine intervention through prayer. It’s a cold (but warming) world out there, and it certainly would be nice if there were some deus (or deus ex machina ) we could invoke to solve some of humanity’s more pressing problems, like global warming.
Recent events suggest there’s going to be a lot more praying going on in the next few years, assuming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is correct in its most recent report that global warming will cause more frequent and more severe droughts. Hotter, colder, we can deal with. But when there’s no water, people are forced to take notice.
In fact, prayers for rain are already ascending from drought-stricken Georgia, where Governor Sunny Perdue recently led a prayer for rain vigil at the State Capitol. The entire U.S. southeast is suffering from drought. In July, Alabama Governor Bob Riley declared a week-long “Days of Prayer for Rain” to “humbly ask for His blessings and to hold us steady in times of difficulty.”
Meanwhile over in Australia, Australian Prime Minister John Howard asked churchgoers back in May to pray for rain to end that country’s record drought. In light of his recent defeat at the polls after 11 years in office, perhaps Howard should have asked for a few prayers on the side for himself.
Was God sending Bush a message through Howard’s defeat? Howard was one of Bush’s strongest supporters in refusing to accept the reality of man-made global warming, or to take any steps to stop it. His opponent made climate change a major issue in the campaign, promising to sign the Kyoto Treaty.
They’re also praying in another drought-hit part of the world, Cyprus, where Archbishop Chrysostomos II has called for prayers for rain. Unlike Australia’s Howard, the archbishop has put some of his money where his prayers are. In August, the Greek Orthodox Church announced that it was going to spend $234 million to build a factory to make photovoltaic panels. Seems that a recent heat wave had caused power cuts, with forecasts for more cuts in 2008 without new sources of electricity.
Having been raised in a Protestant household, I was exposed to prayer early on, so I know the comfort that people can find in prayer. But if we’re going to deal with global warming, prayer won’t be enough, comforting though it may be. Say whatever prayers you like to whatever god, gods, or goddesses you like, but then get to work. The time for cutting way back on greenhouse gas emissions is short, and if we fail in this task, all the praying in the world will not stop drastic changes in world that we, and all the other creatures we share this planet with, have to survive on.
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So far, Richard, I feel my prayers are answered with silence. I pray for an end to the war. I pray for impeachment. I pray for real-life-logical policies in everything.
None of it is coming true.
Perhaps our prayers are being answered by our own activism.
Perhaps we are yet to recognize that we are our own saviors.
I hope so, because I can't get behind a deity that doesn't empower followers to think for themselves.
As I recall my instruction in evaluating the efficacy of prayer, God answered all prayers, but the answers were not necessarily in line with the particular outcome one was praying for. "God works in mysterious ways," and it was only human hubris that led us to think that God was under obligation to answer our prayers as we might answer them if we were in his/her/its place.
So you might say that what appears at first glance to be silence is, in its own way, an answer--that whatever G_d has in mind, we will only learn what the real answer was in the fullness of time, if we live that long.
(We are now skating perilously close to the question of free will and predestination, which are much too weighty to enter into this late in the evening.)
I can remember in the depths of the Nixon crimes hoping to live long enough for history to portray Nixon as a disgraceful, criminal president. It may not have been a full-scale prayer, but it was damn close. At the time of this prayer/wish/dream, I had no hope that Nixon would so soon fall from grace. If only Congress still upheld the constitutional ethics of Nixon's day, a prayer that has no hope of being answered by the current spineless residents of the Capitol.
Why should God answer our prayers? Is God some sort of battered woman, who, upon being treated like crap, is often willing to come back for more?
Or maybe God had answered our prayers and the answer is, "No".