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| A thief |
A lot of things are ongoing and haven't been resolved in any
meaningful way. My prayer strike continues. I continue to grieve and face the
challenges, problems and curveballs of life.
Certainly, there have been no answers to prayers, but at
this rate it would set an uncomfortable precedent for the Almighty, wouldn't
it? If he answers the past prayers of one person who stops praying, then what
if everyone tries it? Ceasing prayer to get prayers answered simply might not
work.
You might wonder why I remain a believer. It is certainly
not to reap the dubious benefits of being one. It is also not to get treated
better by God or mankind. I'm remaining in faith simply because I still think
that this particular faith is true. That there really is a God who became a man
who is, as you read, up there in Heaven happily ignoring prayers and
grief-stricken blog entries.
That doesn't mean I'm currently getting on with him. I'm
not. Giving someone the silent treatment is not an adult or healthy way to
conduct any kind of relationship. But as I know for a fact that God does it
himself, it can't be a sin can it? Unless it always is, no matter who does it.
Maybe it is – that would be a shocker, wouldn’t it? If God could sin. After
all, negligence or cruelty are known to be bad things even when committed by
kings.
David Baddiel’s new
book defending atheism, ‘The God Desire’ seems to be doing pretty well
and he posits that we create the things we long for, including a loving God (it's a kind of reverse argument
from longing). I’m sure that if I wrote a book like that it would do a lot
better than my book ‘Irony – Evidence for God’ (the cover of which is one of my
brother’s brilliant watercolours). I don’t feel desperately mocked by my book
and stand by much of what I said. Irony, including negative irony, really can
be an evidence for the existence of powers greater than we are. But maybe that
book would have done better if I were an atheist… anyway, we don’t
always see the ironies in our lives.
Maybe I could settle for a nice level of agnosticism, or go
for Islam which talks more about God being all mercy rather than all love. That
would get rid of that pesky search for an unconditional love from a God who
always seems to be demanding one condition or the other.
Or maybe I could just create my own faith and have a kind of
altar to, 'The God whom man worships under many names and in many forms.’
Like the one in the meditation room of the Manhattan UN headquarters?
Or maybe, for reasons unknown to us mortals, the UN are
hedging their bets.
It is all ongoing…
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