Prayer changes things. Where and how? It doesn’t save women and children from the monsters in human guise preying on them, it doesn’t prevent tyrants and despots from rising to power, and it doesn’t give us good people of virtue as leaders in America or anywhere else in the world. The wicked continue to prosper as they have ever done and “Honesty is the best policy” seems a hollow mockery of reality.

Much as our own Federal Triune Dictatorship the UN certainly reflects the worst traits of humankind rather than the best. No matter where you look in the UN you will find perversion and corruption. And our own leaders seem to be far more dedicated to perversion and corruption than any ideals of what America used to stand for.

Perhaps there is a “divine plan” for humankind, but if so it seems to me inspired of the Devil rather than some benevolent deity. Throughout the years I served in churches, studied the Bible and preached and taught from it there were the nagging doubts, the faithful will call it a lack of faith, that many things considered orthodox just didn’t make any sense.

The best Jesus offered was to say good people should stay on the straight and narrow path leading to life, that only a few would find that path and be saved, making salvation seem a pretty “iffy” proposition. One of the few things of which I have any real certainty is the slaughter of others in the name of any deity is morally repugnant and has no place in any culture thinking itself “civilized.” And if belief in some deity is the basis of morality this should be measured by the results, not the proclamations of “prophets.”

I am deeply grateful for the blessings of a civilized Christianity and all it has meant to Western Civilization in general and America specifically. What I am opposed to is those of any religion trying to convince others they know anything about God as fact rather than admitting to what is only belief.

But as we enter this election cycle and look at what is being offered We the People as “choices” it cannot help but remind me of a poster I used to keep on one of my classroom walls: “In the event of nuclear attack the prohibition against prayer will be suspended.” And who of us can be blamed for crying out “God help us!” because no one else can. However, prayer and calling out to God has not prevented the murders of millions of innocents, the depredations ongoing against women and children, and this causes me to believe God is too often an easy convenience to excuse otherwise good people from confronting evil with the required determination to overcome evil.

Who doubts women and children cry out to God for help as they are raped, tortured, and murdered by monsters in human guise. But God seems oblivious to their cries for help, oblivious to their pain and suffering. No, there may be a divine plan in all of this but if so it must consist of good people doing their part in overcoming the monsters, in overcoming evil rather than blaming God for the evils of the world then hoping for a better world promising pie in the sky by and by.