Meditation 731
That Baron Münchausen in the Sky
by: George Ardell
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| Agnostic: |
I suppose you believe that your God answers prayers? |
| Christian: |
Of course I do! Why would you even ask such a question? |
| Agnostic: |
I would like to explore the implications of that idea a little. |
| Chris: |
What for? I believe and you don’t. What can we gain from such an exploration? |
| Aggie: | We might both gain some further insight into the use of prayer. |
| Chris: |
I doubt that, but go ahead. |
| Aggie: |
Okay. What is prayer most often used for -- a request to God for some favor or miracle. Right? |
| Chris: |
I suppose so, but there are other uses for prayer that aren’t so selfish, if that is what you are driving at. |
| Aggie: | It isn’t. At least, not for now. My point is that people frequently pray (if they pray at all) for some miracle to help ‘fix’ a problem that has occurred in their life. |
| Chris: |
Even if done selfishly, I can’t see any harm in that. I guess you do? |
| Aggie: |
No, I just think we are ignoring the other end of the stick. |
| Chris: |
What? What does that mean? |
| Aggie: | It means we are ignoring the source of the problem. The problem that initiated the prayer is often an illness or accident or natural disaster. |
| Chris: |
True. I still don’t see your point. |
| Aggie: | My point is that, if there is a god who created us and everything that is, that god also has to be the creator of our problems. |
| Chris: | Are you referring to natural disasters and calling them ‘acts of God’? Let’s not go into that argument. |
| Aggie: | No, I’m not doing that either. I’m referring to something I read in a book by L. C. Graham entitled “God, Do You Exist”. He raised the question about why God always gets the credit but never has to take the blame. |
| Chris: | We create many, if not all, of the problems that plague us. God doesn’t want them to happen. He tries to teach us to live moral lives and stop causing problems for each other. |
| Aggie: | But, if he created us, then he created our problems -- at least indirectly. So he has to accept some blame! |
| Chris: |
I don’t know. |
| Aggie: |
“I don’t know”? Careful, you’re beginning to sound like an agnostic. |
| Chris: | I admit that we can’t know everything about religion. Let’s just let it go at that. |
| Aggie: | I still have some more points to make. If we look at the entire situation (both ends of the stick), we see a god creating or at least allowing problems to occur and then stepping in when prayed to and solving them after the fact rather than preventing them in the first place. In the field of medicine there is a psychiatric disorder called Münchausen Syndrome by proxy (named after the fantastical stories of Baron Münchausen.) The disease is characterized by a parent inflicting the symptoms of a disease on a child for a physician to attempt to heal. To me the idea that God creates problems and then fixes them when He hears a prayer makes it sound as if He has a case of Münchausen Syndrome by proxy on a cosmic scale. He created a world and filled it with people and then allows or causes bad things to happen to them so He can step in and be the doctor -- and receive great praise for doing so. |
| Chris: |
That’s a disgusting idea. |
| Aggie: | But, if your God really exists and the Bible that is supposed to be his Word is literally true, my statement is supported by the facts contained therein! Take Salvation for example. |
| Christian: |
I don’t want to hear this. |
| Agnostic: | Just let me finish. The need for Salvation is based on the idea that your God created a world of pain and suffering from which no one can escape except by ‘accepting Christ’. Right? |
| Chris: |
Yes, that is exactly right! |
| Aggie: | So, looking at it from the standpoint of my idea about Münchausen Syndrome by proxy, we could say that a god created people, inflicted them with suffering (by means of the Forbidden Fruit, for example) and then assumed human form in the person of Christ and made a noble sacrifice so he could come and save them. A case of Münchausen Syndrome by proxy if I ever heard of one. |
| Chris: |
Okay, I’ve heard enough! |
| Aggie: | Just one more statement -- relating to prayer (which we started to talk about at the beginning of this conversation): According to my way of thinking, maybe our prayers should be addressed to “Our Baron” instead of “Our Father”. |