INCESSANT AND RELENTLESS PRAYING IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

Has anyone thought that God needs time to digest and prioritize our prayers? Could this be the reason that as churches proliferate in poor areas, poverty increases despite the constant, unrelenting prayers by the poor, confused, ignorant, and gullible masses? There are now individuals who call themselves prayer warriors and pray every day to God for usually the same favors viz. wealth, children, good health, and banishment of their enemies.

In the old church, Sundays or Saturdays are the main worship days but the new-fangled churches have services almost every day for every type of favor or group. One church has services on Wednesdays for business people, on Fridays for youth, on Mondays for people blind in one eye, on Saturdays for crippled people who can walk with crutches, on Thursdays for crippled people in wheel chairs, and on Sundays for barren couples and so on. These loud cacophonous services last for several hours creating another problem for God, who is overwhelmed and given the time differences around the world finds it difficult to sleep as God is constantly bombarded by prayers from the different time zones.

Prayers continue in the automobile as the worshippers head home via gospel music. As they drive down any main thoroughfare, humungous speakers blare the same gospel music. Their main themes are long life, wealth, health, and death to your enemies or would be enemies. Death by accident is the worst type of death for these Christians and as they put it, it should not be any Christian’s portion. An irritated God will need time to heed these prayers.

The end result is that as the numbers of different religions, sects, denominations, and churches increase in the neighborhood, the level of poverty increases as religion siphons money out of the economy into individual pockets. You must pay tithes to the pastors, purchase gospel music, and pay the prayer warriors. Unanswered prayers lead to more prayers and hope for miracles. The poor even believe in manna falling from the sky as in Biblical days. The rich and affluent now hire prayer warriors to fast and pray for their needs. I wonder what God thinks when these prayers arrive on God’s desk. God may be saying, “These folks are now too big or too busy to directly ask me for favors .”

Every account of an encounter with God has been a revelation usually witnessed only by the narrator of the revelation. There was the case of this happily married prophet who sleeps on the same bed every night with the wife. This prophet claims that God visits him every night, but his loving wife has never witnessed any of these encounters. Why God does not appear to groups is mind-boggling and incomprehensible? How does God choose these “prophets? One criterion is obvious, you are more believable as a prophet if you have been a “serial sinner” or unbeliever.

These revelations are usually followed by the emergence of another denomination especially of Christian churches. These new churches are headed by the revealing prophet and his/her family members and become the latest avenues for praying to God. Treasurers are always family members of the prophet and succession is by family members. If all the pastors, priests and other clergy in the Christian churches today are family members of Jesus Christ, there will be no global churches, as exist today. Fake miracles are performed and the owners/prophets of these churches become enormously wealthy that some are known to own two to three jet aircrafts for evangelism, or ‘fraudulism,’ as I may call it.

The newer churches are always louder than the old churches, and some of the old churches have developed branches, that try to emulate the newly revealed churches, by incorporating loud music and tongue-talking, to prevent loss of membership to the new churches. Revealed religion with apologies to the great philosopher Thomas Paine is a lucrative business.

Even God will find it immensely difficult to decipher the prayers with all the din. The problem is further magnified when the celebrants start speaking in manufactured, meaningless verbiage, which they call speaking in tongues, and usually implies possession by the Holy Spirit. A more civilized way of praying will be to pray God, wait for a response, or if there is no response, then ask God about your earlier prayers. Constantly praying and asking God, for the same favors over and over again, without pausing for a response, makes God angry and irritable, and is a sure way not to have your prayers answered.

Incessant and relentless prayers may be counterproductive.

Another baffling aspect of Christian prayers, is to pray for the repose of the souls of the faithfully departed, to rest in peace, and not that of the unfaithfully departed. The unfaithfully departed need more prayers, so the heart of God may soften, and they may be let into God’s kingdom. Could the reason why there is so much crime in the so-called deeply religious societies, is that the faithfully living, instead of praying for the souls of unfaithfully departed criminals and sinners to rest in peace, are praying for the souls of the faithfully departed who do not need their prayers, as they are already resting in peace?

A pastor once posted a sign on a major highway imploring “motorists to slow down because God needs them.” The pastor forgot that you must die to go to God’s house in Heaven, where God needs you more. A more appropriate sign will be to “Speed, die, and go to Heaven!” A word is enough for the faithful.

Amen.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx