Faith, Charlie Kirk, And The Shame Of The Left - It Has Come Down To This, The Offensiveness Of Prayer

The efficacy of prayer has been debated for centuries, and there is still no agreement.  Most people pray to get things - a new Schwinn for Christmas, a job offer materialized, a clean bill of health - but conservative Christian theologians argue that prayer is only to make one mindful of God, to thank him for his mercy, and to meditate on his divinity.

 

Hindus have perhaps the most evolved notion of man's relationship with God.  Prayer and meditation are means to raise one's consciousness beyond the confines and limitations of Maya or Illusion, to come to the realization that there is only one reason to be on this earth and that is to leave it - to put behind the binding trappings of 'reality' and to aspire to divine evolution.

Hindus do not pray for things - just the opposite.  They pray to be rid of things and consider prosaic Christian beseeching as backward and ignorant.  The glory of God is his Creation, his throwing together the world in seemingly helter-skelter form, and demanding his beings to sort it all out, to make sense of randomness, and to move on. 

 

The Christian God gave man free will so that the meaninglessness of the created universe would not seem so capricious and arbitrary.  Heaven waits for those who have sought, found, and believed. 

Ivan in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov said that Jesus sold the world a bill of goods at the Temptation in the Desert.  'Man cannot live by bread alone', he responded to the Devil, suggesting a higher life of prayer, faith and belief; and in so doing opened the doors to the institution of the Catholic Church which would encourage miracles, mystery, and authority arrogating power to itself and leaving the poor faithful with no bread at all.  Pray for what? asked Ivan. 

Yet if one believes in an omnipresent and omnipotent God, it is natural to ask him to do the supernatural, to cure the sick as Jesus did, to turn water into wine, and the loaves and fishes into bounty.  Regardless of the improbability of the efficacy of prayer or the nature of a God who would choose to pay attention to what gifts are placed under the Christmas tree, we still ask for the most selfish, personal, improbable things. 

Prayer when generalized - that is removed from desire to include divine solace or protection - is also common.  Praying for the souls of the faithful departed is another salutary but ineffective divine request, for whether predestined, preordained, or defined by one's actions on earth, what happens to one after death is beyond our reach.  Gone are the days of Ancient Greece when the souls in the underworld were restive, active, and impulsive; and that borders between living and dead could be crossed and agency on both sides was quite expected. 

 

Praying for the families of those departed is also common, but is more a show of human solidarity than a real expectation of divine intervention. 

In any case, with agency or not, prayer is a feature of all civilized life; and one can be forgiven for making the sign of the cross in a doctor's office or before an important exam.  'Let us pray' if nothing else is an acknowledgement that God exists, that he is not indifferent, and that just possibly he will look kindly upon us; and that in itself is a good reason to pray. 

Even if God does not exist, every society in the world believes he does; or at least belief is fundamental to the national ethos, and that in itself is a unifier, a cohesive force.

So what to make of progressives' anger at the outpouring of prayer for Charlie Kirk and his family? Why of all things should this natural, human, universal sentiment be criticized?  The answer lies in progressivism itself.  As an unremittingly secular movement, it abhors religion and the interference in pursuing a secular, utopian agenda it causes. 

We should be demanding gun control or limiting the incendiary speech of conservatives rather than offering up prayers for a dead man.  Praying for Kirk, acknowledging his own profound faith and belief in God, diverts attention away from the much more pressing political issues of the day.

Moments of prayer in public venues have been criticized by progressives for their selectivity.  Why should we bow our heads in prayer and recognition of the soul of this one particular person and not another.  Prayer excludes, does not include.  Prayer divides, not unifies. 

In a way progressives are right - religion has always been political; and outpourings of prayer for Kirk are expressions of political solidarity more than universal faith.  The prayer gatherings are stand-ins for conservative rallies.  The prayers are not so much for Kirk and his family but for the conservative agenda and its importance. 

Yet by denying Kirk supporters the right to express their faith, occluding as it does their far more resonant political convictions, is displaying the arrogance of the Left and the obdurate conviction that religion not only has no place in American life; it is damaging and counter-reformist. 

The outpouring of prayer for the man is perhaps most noteworthy because of its expression of absolute horror at a nation which seems to have no end to its pernicious downfall. Not only is an outspoken advocate for fundamental, reasonable rights and convictions murdered and removed from the American scene, the entire political environment has been corrupted and dangerously so. 

The Left in its insistent claims that Donald Trump is the clone of Hitler and that conservative Republicans are at heart traitorous, treacherous, anti-democratic zealots has fomented an environment of instinctive hatred and promoted an ethos of removal rather than compromise.

Trump is a populist president, but nothing in his tenure can match the expressions of anger over the murder of Charlie Kirk for sheer volatile sentiment.  'You ain't seen nothing yet', said Erika Kirk, Charlie's wife and political successor.  The lid is finally off, the sanctimony so rigidly enforced by Washington progressives, is gone. 

There will be no more deference to diversity, a sham cover for the progressive agenda.  Shooting Charlie Kirk was like East German guards shooting citizens trying to escape Communism - the Left has always relied on intimidation, threat, and violence to ensure obedience to its ways.  

Progressivism is finally being seen as the divisive, pernicious, damaging movement that it is.  Enough is enough, say conservatives.  This will not stand. 

It is a disgraceful, dishonoring, disreputable scene these days what with many people cheering Kirk's murder and more spitting on the religious sentiments of the population.  The name of Kirk's organization was Turning Point, and his murder certainly is that.  The resentment, hostility, and damning anger of Trump and Kirk supporters can only increase.  

A simple moment of peaceful remembrance for the man, Charlie Kirk, was the least that could be asked for; and even that was denied him.  It is no wonder that the Left, already in disarray, cannot see what they have wrought; but the rest of the country knows perfectly well that the vicious, bilious hatred of the Left will no longer be given an inch.  That heinous period is over.