You May Pray to Understand God’s Will, Not Change It
Once upon a time, I was a benchwarmer for the football team during my sophomore year of high school. Our coach would have us pray before games to gain divine aid and receive an ultimately meaningless sports victory. So in our massive world filled with conflict, death, pain, and horrible movie sequels, (it was 2005, which saw releases of Son of the Mask, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo, and The Ring 2, which can all be considered horror movies) God was supposed to care about a game? Furthermore, as I glanced down the field and saw the other team also kneeling in solemn assembly to ask for God’s help to crush us and win some sports, I wondered if God would have to take a moment to decide which one of us was his favorite.
With all due respect, I don’t really care if you, Reader, believe in anything or nothing. I’m discussing a hypothetical scenario where there is a higher being listening to two sports teams praying to it and actually affecting the outcome of the game based on which one prayed better or had morally superior players. Praying that nobody would get hurt seemed more logical, but we were also playing a sport where everybody strapped on hard objects and ran into each other as quickly as possible, so protecting us from our own stupidity seems like a tall order. A desire to keep everyone safe may have been mentioned in passing, but the core of every pre-game heavenly entreaty was usually to win the game of sportsball.
We should have all been directing our hearts and minds to things that really mattered, like praying for every copy of Son of the Mask to spontaneously combust.