A five-day conference to call for divine intervention in the HIV/Aids pandemic in South Africa will be held next week, the Institute for Christian Leadership Development said on Friday.
"We are going to pray and extract biblical principles on how to counsel the society when dealing with the HIV/Aids pandemic," institute spokesperson Timothy Olusegun told the South African Press Association.
"As Christians, we cannot keep quiet as thousands of South Africans, young and old continue to die, ... as we see the suffering in our nation, week after week.
- Call for God's intervention in Aids crisis
The god of the Christian faith seems quite adamant in regard to his omniscience. Thus, shouldn’t he have already noticed the AIDS crisis in South Africa rather the relying on a five-day prayer-a-thon to jolt him out of his ignorance? Hell, even I know there’s an AIDS crisis in South Africa, and my omniscience is a bit short in the omni-department. Has god no access to google news?
Either way, the idea of “prayer leading to intervention” strikes me as inherently unfair. Hypothetically, let’s say rich, spoiled, twelve-year-old Johnny Smith, fond of harassing his elderly neighbors and strangling cute kittens, is in a car wreck. One day, while running away after shop-lifting from a local convenience store, Johnny is hit by a car and falls into a coma. However, he has many relatives who all pray for his recovery. In fact, his very, very rich father even sponsors a five-day conference to encourage others to pray for his recovery. In the face of all of this prayer, god notices (oops! Look! A sick boy!) and heals him.
Nearby, homeless, orphaned twelve-year-old Joseph Snarkles who is always polite to both the elderly and felines, is walking home when he is similarly struck by a car. Joseph, sadly, has no one to pray for him and therefore god either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care (take your pick) and Joseph dies.
I’m sure some will argue that I’m taking this too far to the extreme, and that god will only listen to prayers for the righteous. Fine. So, hypothetically, Joey Johnson and John Jetty lead identical, well-behaved lives, both are in car accidents, and end up in the hospital on the verge of death. Joey is rendered unconscious near his home and his relatives thus know of his injury and decide to pray for him (10 points for Joey!). John, on other hand, is hit away from his family, who don’t know of the danger he faces, and thus doesn’t pray for him (0 points for John). God notices Joey and heals him while god doesn’t notice John and he dies.
Is this still not close enough to reality?
How about, hypothetically*, there’s an AIDs crisis in Africa, leading to the death of around 6,000 people per day. God either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care (take your pick) until the Christian Leadership Development holds a five-day conference. Suddenly god notices/cares and cures AIDs (using another of his supposed omni-type powers). This sucks for the 6,000 people per day who died before the conference. However, the people after the conference feel pretty darn lucky. Apparently, to receive the benefits of god’s will, one just has to poke him in the side (via prayer) for a bit.
If a god did exist, and these were the rules he played by, I’d tell him to screw off. Prayers leading to any sort of influence of god’s actions to me feels like an antiquated popularity context, similar to paying the local priest for indulgences. It seems like the idealized version of divine influence (similar to the idealized version of politics) should be based on merit and need rather than prayer (or bribes).
Holding conferences to acquire divine influence is a waste of resources. It’s a waste of time. It’s a lack of planning. Praying, like hoping, is not planning. Teaching about safer sex is planning. Distributing condoms is planning. Funding medical research is planning. Praying is not planning; planning is planning.
* There is no HTML tag for sarcasm, so I had to resort to bold and italic
