I wrote a bit back about the Pray4Trig site, which was suggesting all True Christians (vs. all us Ersatz Christians) pray for Trig Palin to be miraculously cured of Down Syndrome in April.

Evidently, God’s Faithful need to pray for a good sysadmin and hosting site, because some rude people threatened, then executed (they claim) a DDoS attack against the site. Which lack of divine protection evidently shook their faith.

Something happened on January 19.

In addition to the regular load of hate mail we got from those who hate the Lord, we received an anonymous emailed threat, promising a DDoS attack at a specific time. The emailer said he (or is it she?) was offended that we were “disparaging Trig Palin”.

Nothing could be further from the truth! But it’s not the first time we’ve heard this.

I don’t suppose that hearing it multiple times gave you some pause for thought.  Some folks, while recognizing that Down Syndrome isn’t any walk in the park, reject that it’s a condition that’s all horrific as all that.

Anyway, I’d expect that True Christians, seeking to magnify the majesty of the Lord (as though it needs Internet stunts to magnify it) would be proof against network attacks, especially if they prayed for it.  Since we know that True Christians get whatever they want when they pray (and if they don’t, then they’re not True Christians).

At the appointed time, our server crashed. God had told us to take this one seriously, so we’d backed up our database immediately before.

God helps those who back themselves up, I guess.

However, this made it clear to us that this site was not helping to demonstrate the majesty of God. It was sowing discontent and hatred among those who didn’t understand. So, we decided to let you, the users of the site, decide what the Worldwide Day of Prayer should focus upon.

Because that’s what was sowing hatred — your suggestion about what True Christians ought to pray for to prove that True Christians have a hotline to God for Divine Intercession.

So now they’re Pray4Healing, and they have a poll running to determine what “people all over America (or the world) can get behind” as a topic for Divine Intercession.  It’s still not clear why just one thing can be prayed for, or why God would pay attention to a majority of the True Christians, vs. a single heart-felt prayer from one of the faithful.  But I guess God’s gotten a bit more democratic over the millennia.

And what are the choices in the poll (titled “Which miracle do you think Americans would most support?” which would seem to imply that only Americans can be True Christians)?

David Ring, a Christian evangelist with cerebral palsy, wakes up healed.

Well, that would be impressive.  I don’t know anything about Mr Ring, but I wish him well.

Osama bin Laden, Muslim terrorist, converts to Christianity.

That would certainly be an interesting development.  However, we know that people convert to and from different faiths (and non-faiths).  Muslims have become Christian. Christians have become Muslim.  Both have become atheists, and vice-versa.  A change of heart may come from the Lord (cf. Saul of Tarsus) or not; that’s hardly the objective proof that the site was looking of the majesty of God.

Stephen Hawking finds his ALS is eliminated, enjoys health of the body.

That would certainly be impressive.  And Hawking is a good choice, as a prominent personality, if you’re trying to get the general public to vote with their prayers.  Not that that should make any difference.

Larry Flint, atheist pornographer, is able to walk again.

Physical healings are always good publicity.  Flynt would be an interesting choice — and his animus against do-gooding Christians (and vice-versa) would lend it a really nice turning-the-other-cheek Good Samaritan note about it.

Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist, wakes up healed of his paralysis.

I’d certainly hope Krauthammer heals from his accident from decades ago, but I’m not sure why he gets special treatment.

Osama bin Laden turns himself in as a lasting peace breaks out in the Middle East.

To hell with bin Laden, give us lasting peace in the Middle East, and you’ve got a convert.  Of course, that would fly in the face of a lot of End Times folks who see conflict in the Middle East as necessary for the Second Coming.  That might cause some interference in the circuits.

That Obama Psalm 109:8 thing. (KIDDING!!)

At which point the site blows all its credibility.  The whole Ps. 109:8 thing simply a horrific, hateful meme, and even kidding about it (in the context of things that True Christians ought to pray for) is like wishing for, say, a horrific earthquake to swallow Port-au-Prince “(KIDDING!!)”

A miraculous display. Like a vision of Mary if you stare at the sun.

Okay, fiery letters in the sky would be pretty persuasive.  Staring into the sun, on the other hand, is just stupid.  People staring into the sun and seeing Mary and not being actually blinded … that would be fairly impressive.

PZ Myers publicly converts from atheism to follow the One True God.

I guess that would be more acceptably miraculous than PZ Myers publicly converting frmo atheism and following the way of Zoroaster.  Or the Norse pantheon.  But, then, as noted with OBL above, conversions are cheap, hardly the sort of incontrovertible evidence that the Pray4Healing types are looking to rub in the nose of atheists.

Other: ________________________

In case you have something better to pray for.

So the poll (God responds to polls, or people who choose their prayers based on them?) is a mix of “convert this person to Jesus” (not really an objective miracle), miraculous healing (not bad, esp. in the case of chronic medical conditions like Hawking, vs. nerve damage like Flynt or Krauthammer), and big gaudy miracles (Mary, Middle East).

Shirlee, the site owner, suggested some criteria for something that would “something which can turn the hardest-hearted atheist to the Lord, helping bring us as a nation and as a planet back to He who made us”:

• She agrees with a correspondent that we should avoid big gaudy miracles, like stopping the sun from rising or setting, since that seems like Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness.
• Said correspondent suggest that while full healing from some chronic not-usually-spontaneously-healed condition would be pretty keen — say, someone in a persistent vegetative state due to brain damage — they would be happy with a partial recovery that demonstrated brain function returning (”Blink if you’ve been healed by Jesus”).  Why God would go just part way with prayer-induced healing isn’t explained.
• Shirlee suggests that “the subject of the prayer should be willing to be prayed for, if the subject is an individual” — which would probably rule out Myers and bin Laden, at least.
• Someone offered up “the miracle of having each baby/child in every NICU/PICU across the country be perfectly healed of whatever illness or trauma they are suffering on the day of prayer.”  Such a great mass healing would, indeed, be miraculous — and, I daresay, would attract a lot of converts. Shirlee shoots this down, though, suggesting that “There is no single point/person for people to focus upon. It’s far too general and vague, and doesn’t involve someone people ‘know of’.”  Sorry, babies — you’re not prayer-worthy, or at least not within the power of True Christians to pray effectively for you.
• Shirlee doesn’t seem thrilled about the PZ Myers idea, either, since he might be (despite the earnest prayers of True Christians) be lying about his conversion.  “Trouble is, lying and saying he was converted would serve the purpose of making God look foolish. God does not like to be made to look foolish; that’s why many countries have blasphemy laws, to protect Him from such things.”  Because God actually needs to be protected from blasphemy.
• Correspondents suggest that Hawking is a good candidate for prayer (”if cured he himself being an intelligent rational person would have to recognize the existence of an intercessory god. What better way for god to convert the scientifically minded than to heal one of their own?”), Ring (”If god would heal a very devout christian man of CP, it would surely convince many”), Michael J Fox (”if he was cured of Parkinson’s, he’d have to accept the belief that stem cell research is toying with the work of god”), but probably not Muhammed Ali (”Healing a famous muslim might send out a message that allah is a false god, but others may get the idea that allah is indeed the same as god”).  The idea that healing someone might be good in and of itself, regardless of the politics involved, doesn’t seem to have sunk in.

Side note: Shirlee, for all her piety, is (like many fundamentalists / evangelicals) virulently anti-Catholic.  “High Church? What, the Catholic Cult? Do you mean the people who worship ‘Mary’ and actually believe that crackers and wine turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus?”  One wonders what she thinks about Myers “cracker” shenanigans.  For those who see Christians as some sort of ideological monolith, it’s worth remembering.)

It’s also worth noting that Shirlee is squarely in Pat Robertson’s camp:  “Tell me, if Haitians didn’t make a pact with Satan to remove the French from Haiti, why did God allow the earthquake to happen?”

And that, right there, friends, tells you all  you need to know.  Shirlee, Pray4Trig, Pray4Healing, is all about God’s fury, God’s animus, God’s punishment.  People whose ancestors did something wrong get brutally slaughtered by God’s earth-shaking wrath.  People who aren’t True Christians (Catholics evidently need not apply) are left to suffer from whatever earthly ills they are afflicted with (doubtless from God’s hand).

True Christians, though, get the jackpot — their prayer, especially if magnified by a bunch of other True Christians, can get God to do whatever they want. Well, as long as they pray for the right thing.  Though as True Christians, one would assume they would know what the right thing to pray for would be (clearly not averting earthquakes from placees like Haiti).

It’s invoking God, as I said, as a parlor trick.  It’s Christianity as Magic (”clerical magic” in D&D terms).  Believe the right thing, say the right words, perform the right ritual with the right people, and God will reliably deliver up the Cure Serious Wounds.  Do it wrong, and, at best, it won’t work.  At worst, your house, school, orphanage, hospital, cathedral, city will be brought down on top of you, killing you wife, your husband, your mother, your father, your children.

So (as the song goes) be Good for Goodness Sake.

People sometimes wonder why other people consider Christians to be “bad guys.”  The answer is pretty clear, when you see Christians who not only promise that people who don’t believe Just the Right Thing are going to spend eternity in horrific torment (which is pretty nasty, if somewhat removed and hypothetical), but that anything bad that happens to you (earthquakes, at least, if not DDoS attacks) are because you’ve broken the rules and must be punished.

Whence comes book burnings, witch burnings, and stoning of sinners and heretics.

If I’m going to pray for someone, I’m going to try to pray for them regardless of whether I think they are a good person or a bad person (certainly that’s what Jesus seemed to suggest was the right course).  And I’m not going to do it so that people will be impressed by my 1337 Xtian Skillz, but because they are my “neighbor.”  And because God doesn’t always automagically answer everything I pray for, I’m going to also try to do something besides prayer — help the person, contribute time or money to a cause that would help them, etc. (cf. James 2).

I don’t say that for the sake of sounding like a Nice Guy.  I say that because that’s what I believe in.

Shirlee’s particular brand of Christianity is not unique to her.  Her take on how God materially and temporally rewards virtue and punishes vice is the root of the Prosperity Gospel.  And Calvin’s Elect.  And Edwards infant damnation.  And the Salem witch trials.

I do pray for people I know. For people I love. Family. Friends. People I know. I’m human, after all.  But my faith doesn’t depend on prayers being answered, on being proven magically correct. And my devotion to my loved ones is not limited to prayer.

And the God I believe in doesn’t need Internet publicity stunts to prove his majesty,  or to  sway people to his cause, or to prove those who doubt him wrong.  He doesn’t need to punish people who don’t pray the right way (or who don’t even believe in prayer at all).  His patience is infinite, his love and acceptance likewise, his expectations around how we deal with each other, not how we toe some theological line.

I don’t understand Shirlee’s God. I don’t understand why he can (or will) only perform miracles prayed for by some critical mass of True Believers.  I don’t understand why he can only be prayed to corporately.  I don’t understand why he can only perform in such a way as to magnify his ostensibly infinite majesty.

I guess I’m naive that way.

Thus endeth the lesson.