Something I shared on Facebook. It was really in response to something one of my cousins wrote: "Prayer works"
Can I share a thing?
We don't have any control over God's decisions, not from the beginning until now. None of our actions dictate God's choices. This is evident in what we see, what we have always seen. To say that God works to do a thing because we pray for it just isn't true. It may be what we hope for, but it isn't what we see.
The great genie granted us our wishes because we rubbed his lamp in all the right ways, and now we are never sick, we never suffer in our labors, and we never die.
We know there is no genie. God is severely honest with us, and has made plain to us that God is no genie.
Am I saying that God doesn't answer prayers? No I am not. But I am saying that God is honest with us about how God feels about us. I am saying that God will have mercy on whomever God wants to have mercy. The choice is God's alone, not yours, not your mother's, not your ancestors', not because you are good, not because you help the poor, not because you help the sick, not because you are holy, not because you follow the laws and commandments, not because you descend from Abraham, not because you are better than, not because you destroy God's enemies, not because you lead people to God, not because you worship, not because you understand scriptures - but ONLY because God made a choice. God does not owe anyone anything for any work or labor performed, nor does God accept any payments. If this isn't evident to you, then go out and do A and see if God does B.
When people pray in this place, it is like begging for something from someone who really doesn't like you. I suppose then this is a notable difference between a genie and the god of this world (the god of spirits and feelings): genies don't require begging, and you never have to make the same request more than once.
It is our hope that God loves us more than we love ourselves; that God puts more care into us than we are able to put into ourselves. (Though it is not what you see, it is what you hope.) If God doesn't love us more than we love ourselves, then we have always been ruined - we have always been destroyed - there is nothing to hope in - and God is as vicious and as cruel as the worst of mankind, encouraging and justifying all manner of treacherous judgment and violence (like the warmongering, rape encouraging, psychopaths who wrote Deuteronomy), rejecting mercy and instead demanding sacrifices of prayers and worship and animal blood. In which case I'd rather exist as a dog or jellyfish or bumblebee who blissfully live everyday anew, are not anxious of a future with or without God, and go back into non-existence when they perish (just as it was before they were born).
People who pray in this place are like the tormented who praise God because they had one single minute of their day without agonizing pain; or like the starving who shout praises of thanksgiving because they found a few breadcrumbs on the floor; or like the destitute who leap with joys of praise because they found a penny in a trashcan.
If this is all that God is willing to give, the most that anyone could ever expect from God, then this is not God loving us more than we love ourselves. This is not love at all. This is a master/slave relationship where we must work and beg for the teeniest tiniest bit of mercy and kindness (meaning that what we receive when God gives in to our pleads and beggings isn't actually mercy or kindness - but rather some other ego-filled aggressive nonsense).
Why is this not love? Because it isn't how you want to be treated, it isn't how you'd ever want your children to be treated. Because justice is rooted in love and mercy. Justice is setting right what is set wrong, building up what needs to be built up, leveling what needs to be leveled, restoring what needs to be restored, repairing what needs to be repaired. Mercy is the act of creating conditions for justice to exist. And love is the deeply empathetic motivation to do justice. As such, there is no true difference between kindness and justice.
Let us be honest. Is what you receive from God, for all these years, justice? Likely not. Not with all the begging and pleading and the thousands year hope of a future that is always just around the corner. As for this race (humanity), hope is in death. It is the common feature of most religions. Any real and worthwhile acts of kindness from God will have to wait until you drop dead. It is what those before you taught you --- but it isn't what God taught you. You don't see God with you in your flesh so God must be with you in the spirit. "God isn't much of a father to me right now, but he will be later in heaven. God is not kind to my body, so God must be kind to my spirit. The alternative is that God is not with me at all - and that is unacceptably untrue."
How can you be sure whether or not God is with you? Find a person you are certain is without God - do you see God treating them any differently?
We can be sure that if God made us God's choice, and God chooses to answer a prayer, and God loves us more than we love ourselves, then whatever we receive will be justice. It won't be a painless decade, or a million breadcrumbs, or a trillion pennies, it will be an end of oppression (even in the forms that a faithless mind would ever consider). Justice doesn't require you to ask for it, nor is its services rendered by payments of prayer and praise; it is freely given as often as it is pursued.
BTW - regarding Deuteronomy, it was both Jeremiah and Zephaniah who said that the priests and scribes did violence to the law (to you, the law is a cohesive whole and the word of God, to them it was not).
"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: 'Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. The lying pen of the scribes has made the Law into a lie." ~ Jeremiah 7 & 8.
"Woe to the oppressive city! Her leaders within her are roaring lions; Her judges are wolves at evening; Her prophets are insolent, treacherous men; Her priests have profaned the sanctuary. They have done violence to the Law." ~ Zephaniah 3
