Pray Me to Death

I spend my mornings watching the Rachel Maddow Show on itunes. Given the time difference, I have to wait till the morning after it airs to see her show. It's a nice way to wake up, drink some tea, find out what's going on in the world and especially American politics. Today's episode brings up some ridiculousness. I mean ri-di-cu-lous: Rick Perry.

Rachel loves election politics. The more out-there a candidate is, the more she eats it up because she just finds it so entertaining and so hilarious. So Rick Perry and his wooing of a possible presidential run is one thing she keeps her eye on, and then reports to the rest of us. His latest thing? A prayer meeting. He's invited all the governors of the other states to a day of prayer in Texas and his website has all kinds of videos inviting the "American people" to join him, either physically (and then - boy-oh-boy! - financially with a donation) or spiritually from wherever they happen to live. One of the conservative sponsors of the event has a list of all the pastors attending this thing online. They've also conveniently compiled a bunch of these pastors' videos. Oh. My. God.

I refuse to watch these people's videos myself - I won't give them the satisfaction. Also, I'm not a fan of vomiting. But having seen the clips Rachel highlighted (so as to make a point about the company Perry keeps), these people are insane. Not the usual "you're-on-the-right-I'm-on-the-left-so-we-disagree" kind of crazy. One of them thinks Oprah is the harbinger of the Apocalypse. Another thinks God sent Hitler to Earth to move the Jews back to the Middle East. Another thinks there's a harlot who comes around to the nations of the world, sleeping with their leaders and causing chaos. Apparently, her sleeping with the sun god caused Japan's economy to tank. This is serious wack-o territory.

No large portion of the population will take those kinds of things seriously. But what annoys (or worries?) me is that Rick Perry is translating these ideas into the background of his more mainstream packaging. A prayer meeting to fix the economy?! In his video, Perry literally asks people to pray for the economy to get better because, after all, government never actually gets anything done. Politicians just sit around like fat cats. It's prayer that will turn this recession around for good.

Seriously?! I'm all for people praying (in private or with their own community). If you feel better afterwards, if it makes you calmer or more confident, go for it. I'm not going to judge. But praying without then doing anything for yourself? This is when I get too annoyed to look these people in the face. When someone walks up to you and says something along the lines of, "I got a parking space today because I prayed for one," it makes me want to punch them. No. You got a parking space because you drove around until you found one. "If I pray hard enough, I'll get funding to go to college." Not if you don't fill out some applications, you won't. By all means, pray as you fill out the funding. Pray after you send in the application. But you have to do some work yourself, too. This idea that we can all just passively go through life, always counting on someone else to do the legwork just makes me so annoyed. That's the real crux of this issue for me: you're not faithfully expressing some all-mighty maxim of Christianity, you're being lazy. You're waiting for me to go out and vote, or pay into your retirement fund, or call my Congressman/woman to get a jobs bill on the floor. Stop praying and start working on something.