Two disparate Christian responses to high gas prices

One of these is the usual parade of batshit crazy, and the other is a comparatively rare case of a church doing what we're meant to believe churches do all the time: something good for their community. Makes sense that the latter is located in Austin, where people have a tendency to be pretty cool, even some of the religious ones.

In San Francisco, of all places, a bunch of dimwits staged a "pray-in" at a local gas station, begging Sky-Daddy to bring gas prices down. Prayer, as we all know, is that comforting act believers engage in that allows them to feel they're dealing with problems without actually having to do anything. I can understand everyone's frustration at four-dollar gas. But good grief, you fundies were the ones who gave this disastrous administration two terms in which to wreak the havoc we're all now in. Praying to fix a mistake that cataclysmic isn't a whole lot more than slamming the barn doors after the horses are all out, eh? Anyway, old Rocky Twyman, devout as he may be, ought to take a pointer or two from the Neumann family: when it comes to working, prayer has a fairly poor track record.

What does work? People helping people, that's what. I'm perfectly happy to compliment anyone, religious or not, if they do something that shows a healthy community spirit and a willingness to do some real, effective good. And in Cedar Park, just north of Austin, the nondenominational HighPointFellowship made a deal with a neighborhood Exxon that anyone who turned up between 10 and 1 on Sunday could buy their gas for just over a dollar less per gallon, with the church making up the difference. Hundreds of folks took advantage, and the church ended up forking over about five grand.

Yeah, sure, they did it to get some publicity (of course they handed out flyers for their church to people waiting to fill up). But if a group like ACA had the spare cash to do something like this, we'd probably hand out flyers too. The point is, two groups of Christians saw a community-wide problem, and chose opposite ways of handling it. The San Francisco church chose an exercise in goofy futility, while the Cedar Park folks understood something a lot of us have been saying all along: One pair of working hands achieves more than 10,000 pairs of praying hands. Nicely done, HighPoint.

Proof that we are not a Christian nation

Ladies and gentlemen, may I please direct your attention to the public attention that Pastor Wiley Drake has received for his call to imprecatory prayer against Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Pastor Drake has urged his followers to call down the wrath of God on the AU leadership, as modeled in such Bible passages as Psalms 109, 55, 58, 68, 69, and 83. Let's take a quick look at a few passages from these chapters:
"Let his days be few; and let another take his office."
"Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell."
" Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD."

Now let's consider a thought experiment. Suppose that prayer really worked. If Pastor Drake's call to mass prayer were effective, then presumably within a short time, Reverend Barry Lynn and his supporters would be dead, their teeth broken, their children vagabonds, etc., etc. And all as a direct result of a specific action taken by this clown.

What we have here is premeditation with an intent to aid in violence and/or murder. Drake doesn't intend to get his hands dirty by killing Barry Lynn himself, but he is invoking a prayer which he believes will indirectly lead to Lynn's death. Well, that's not cool in US law, and if people did believe in prayer, I imagine some of them would want Drake tried and locked up immediately.

But prayer doesn't work. And everybody knows that damn well. Drake's followers might be incited to commit violence against Barry Lynn -- we sure hope not -- but God never will. His prayer means nothing.

And so the justice system doesn't need to give this a second thought, because Drake's words are just covered as freedom of speech. They don't have a prayer of actually achieving any physical results.

Although, of course, I'm sure that he'll be only too happy to accept credit if Lynn should happen to meet with some kind of accident or illness at any time for the rest of his natural life.