The Failure of "Thoughts and Prayers"

(This essay was originally posted on Facebook a few days after the Parkland school shootings.)

A couple days ago I posted something where I condemned Republicans for only offering "thoughts and prayers" as a response to the latest mass shooting in the U.S. A college student friend of mine responded to my post by writing, "I wonder if thoughts and prayers would work instead of me studying."

That was actually an extremely brilliant piece of snarky writing. Of course, if any student I had ever taught had come to me with an explanation for their poor test score, that they had not studied, but had instead simply "thought and prayed" I would have laughed them out of my classroom. Students have a responsibility to study and work to get their grades and we would never expect God to intervene to help Alice or Bob get a better grade on the test I'd given to my class on Macbeth. Then why do we think prayers are the answer to other, even more serious, problems we face?

Prayer is something that people expect too much from. They think that God sits in the sky and sorts through every request, like Santa Claus, and grants the wishes of those whose prayers are the most sincere or of those who are the best behaved. But, remember, there is no Santa in reality, and no Santa-like God. Prayer is far more complicated than that.

I think the Holocaust should have put an end to the idea that thoughts and prayers can overturn great evil simply by being spoken. Were there no prayers sent to God by the millions who found themselves in concentration camps? I would expect there were multitudes of nightly prayers launched from Auschwitz, Dachau, and other similarly horrifying places. What kind of God ignores those prayers? A "Christian" I knew answered that question by saying their prayers were not answered because those prayers were not sent by Christians who had been saved. What kind of God ignores those prayers, regardless of who they are from? A God who ignores the prayers of the Holocaust because of the beliefs of the senders is not a God worthy any sort of worship.

But, the problems is not God, it is with humans. We don't realize that if God intervenes on the behalf of one, He/She must intervene on behalf of all. And the fact the world does not work in this way is abundantly clear. Some who pray end up dying of cancer and some are cured. There is no way of knowing the reasons why the mysterious occurs and why it often doesn't--the answers have not yet been discovered and they probably never will be. Perhaps the answer is related, though, to the idea that God, if there is such an entity, has given us the precious gift of free will, and when we possess the gift of free will, there is no puppeteer to fall back on when life takes a dismal turn. With free will we are left to take our faith in God, use our free will, and put God's will into action, that is the human fate. It is our responsibility to be doers, going beyond simple utterance of thoughts and prayers.
Prayer, rather than being a plea to some cosmic Santa, is, instead, a way for humans to meditate and to try to find a sense of the spiritual to help guide us to discover the path of truth and light and to discern what God's will might be: prayer is not begging for God to do something, it is establishing a dialogue where we work to seek the truth that exists in what is transcendent. Then, after this process, it is our responsibility, just like it is the responsibility of the student to study to pass their test, to do the work needed to put what is right and good and true into practice into the world in which we find ourselves. The world will never become transformed until those who possess faith realize that WE are usually the answer to our prayers.

Thoughts and prayers. They have their place. But when we face great horrors in the world, whether it be the Holocaust or endless slaughter of our fellow humans because of guns being prevalent everywhere, we then have a duty to take our thoughts and prayers and put them into action so that we do whatever we can to eliminate the harm to our brothers and sisters around us. To do anything less is an affront to those who have perished and indeed is an affront to God, who expects far more from us than mouthing hopeful words that simply evaporate into the sky.