An Unbeliever's Prayer, by John Gunther, Jr.

John Gunther was a famous American journalist. His works are mostly now outdated, such as Inside Russia Today. But his most lasting work is probably Death Be Not Proud, which documents the story of his son dying of brain cancer (Pyramid, 1963). It was made into a TV movie in the 1970s.

His son, John Gunther, Jr., wrote an “unbeliever’s prayer” while he was dying in July 1946.

Almighty God

forgive me for my agnosticism

For I shall try to keep it gentle, not cynical,

nor a bad influence.

And O!

if Thou art truly in the heavens,

accept my gratitude

for all Thy gifts

and I shall try

to fight the good fight. Amen.

The Tragedy of The Questing Spirit

In 1947, in the wake of World War II, Coward McCann Publishers released a 700-page book called The Questing Spirit: Religion in the Literature of Our Time. All during the war, editors Halford E. Luccock and Frances Brentano gathered their examples of stories, plays, essays, and poems in the hope, which must often have seemed dim to them, that the War would end. This book is now virtually extinct. For the first few hundred pages, which I read to induce sleep, a little bit each night, I thought its extinction deserved. I was going to give it to the library, which might then recycle it, since it is falling apart. Indeed, many of the entries are merely devotional, even pieces by such recognized writers as E. M. Forster and Saki. I kept hoping for something that was actually a quest for understanding.

But a few passages stuck out. Lloyd Douglas (author of The Robe) referred to the world as “not fit to live in, much less die for.” L. P. Jacks wrote that humans were “ill adapted for living an easy life, but well adapted for living a difficult one.” And there was another story about shepherds that ran off to greet the birth of the Messiah, except one, who would not leave his sheep. He explained that he was a savior to those hundred sheep he stayed to protect. One particularly thought-provoking story was Peter’s Difficulty, by Frank Harris. Peter, guarding the gates of heaven, was worried that someone was helping deformed people sneak into heaven. Upon investigating, Peter found that it was the Virgin Mary who was doing it.

Some authors lived through the same spiritual angst that I had experienced. The loss of fundamentalist religious doctrine left me angry because God ought to exist. I wanted, and want, God to exist. But fundamentalism demanded that I believe all good people are going to hell if they did not accept the narrow Christian doctrines that I held. Even in the midst of fundamentalism, I never believed this. One author who shared my anger was the famous historian Will Durant. He wrote a letter (presumably to God, though he left it blank). He wrote, “Every invention strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; every new mechanism displaces men, and multiplies the horrors of war.” Human life, he said, was a “fitful pullulation.” Perhaps foreseeing Deep Ecology, Durant wrote that humans were “a planetary eczema.”

Some particularly striking entries were:

• The Dawn of Peace, a poem by Alfred Noyes about how peace was coming like the dawn; what was once a vain dream is now an unstoppable reality: “Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them, or thrust the dawn back for one hour.” I think that before he died, Noyes was sorely disappointed.
• Vachel Lindsay exactly reflected what I believe today in his poem The Unpardonable Sin. “This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: This is the sin no purging can atone: To send forth rapine in the name of Christ, To set the face, and make the heart a stone.” This is what I would like to say to the warlike Trump-worshipers 72 years later!
• John Galsworthy wrote a poem, Wonder, that made a similar point. “If God is thrilled by a battle cry...If God laughs when the guns thunder...Then, bewildered, I but wonder God of Love can love such things!” He ended the poem, “Merciless God, goodbye!”
• Perhaps most striking was a poem by Sara Henderson Hay, The Shape God Wears, in which different animals described what God is like, in their images, and then the human tells them they are all wrong: God is actually in man’s image. A forgotten masterpiece.

The editors must have hoped that their quest would have some effect on the world. It did not. But even if the rest of the world has forgotten this book, I will remember it, even if for just the dozen or so pages that stood out.

Evangelicals Worship Trump?

I have written lots of words about how evangelicals seem to have abandoned Jesus and turned their souls over to Trump. But this cartoon says it better than any words!

Don't We Feel So Sorry for Paul Manafort

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, was sentenced to prison today. His sentence could have been almost twenty years for the crimes he committed, but he received only 47 months, from which “time already served” was subtracted. He had to pay back the money he had gotten illegally, and pay what for him was a small fee.

And yet, through his lawyer, he whined that this sentence was causing him emotional distress and physical discomfort, and he wants us to all feel so freaking sorry for him.

Do convicted criminals deserve any punishment at all? Republicans seem to think that Republican criminals do not. This is just one more way in which Republicans consider themselves to exist on a godlike plane above the mundane world of human beings.

How to Love Thy Neighbor

There are lots of ways to love thy neighbor, most of which non-religious people affirm as well as religious people. Many of these ways are costly and time-consuming. I cannot afford the time or money to go help people in the latest war-torn site of starvation, disease, and despair—at the moment, I cannot even remember where this is. Yemen? South Sudan?

But there are some very simple ways, also. For example, by not throwing your garbage in the street or, especially, in your neighbor’s yard. I mean, how hard is that to figure out?

You can quickly gauge a community’s sense of spiritual love by counting the number of pieces of garbage in public areas. Oklahoma, where I live and work, is in the middle of the Bible belt and ought to be the place in the world most permeated with the love of God. But this is what I have found, based on actual count:

• Tulsa: My wife and I walked along residential streets and through about a mile of city park land along a creek, total distance of about 1 ½ miles. Total number of garbage items: 1,325 plus or minus about 15. This is 833 pieces of litter per mile.
• Durant: I walked about six blocks (about six tenths of a mile) through my neighborhood, and counted 640 pieces of garbage. Some were in my yard, but I did not put them there; they were things I would not even have bought. This is 1067 pieces of litter per mile.

(The image above is not from Oklahoma.) This garbage was everything from chunks of furniture down to cigarette butts. All of them were visible without having to stop and look closely.

American evangelicals like to consider France to be a spiritually desolate country, because most of its Christians are people the evangelicals will not admit are Christians. But in Paris, which is notoriously dirty, the number would be far less than the approximately 900 pieces of garbage per mile typical of my Oklahoma samples. I was too busy to count while I was there, but I’ll bet it’s around 100. And in Strasbourg, it would be about 20, or even close to zero. The French people, especially outside of Paris, are thoughtful of the environment they share with their neighbors.

Since you were wondering, only one of the pieces of garbage—in a parking lot in Tulsa—was a condom.

Global Warming Denialism: What Fundamentalists Are Forcing God to Say

Fundamentalist Christians insist that, since God controls the seasons and the weather, there is nothing that we can do to alter it. This is the basis for their insistence that, no matter how much carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, global warming will not occur unless God wants it to. That is, if God has decided that global warming will occur, then it will occur even if we totally cease all carbon emissions; and if God has decided it will not occur, then we can pour all the carbon we want to into the air and nothing bad will happen.

The fundamentalists base this belief upon Genesis 8:22, in which God tells Noah right after the big Flood, “While the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” This verse does not say that global warming will not occur, so long as the seasons continue. There are no scientists who say that global warming will cause seasonal and geographical differences to cease to exist. But to fundamentalists, this verse means that God is in charge of climate and seasons, and that whatever happens on Earth is whatever God has already planned. We cannot reduce global warming by driving smaller cars, nor can a rich televangelist make global warming worse by flying around in a private jet.

This would be a laughably trivial matter except that it is the principle upon which the Republicans who are largely ruling America believe. The most famous global warming denier, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, has said that, because “God’s still up there,” the “arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

But the Bible also suggests in several places that God is also in charge of your lifespan. God has already decided how many days you are going to live, and there is nothing you can do about it. The verse that says this most clearly is Psalm 139:16, in which the psalmist records words he attributes to God: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Fundamentalists usually use this verse to prove that an “unformed substance” (an embryo) is fully human (“my” unformed substance). Almost in passing, they acknowledge that this means our days are numbered.

Elsewhere, Jesus says that the hairs of our head are numbered. I remember listening to evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong on the radio telling us all that his hair was falling out, and that if he counted them, he could calculate the exact date on which he would become bald. He seems to have been unaware that, in most cases, when a hair falls out of a follicle, a new one grows back.

Perhaps “numbered” just means “limited”? The hairs of our head, and the days of our lives, are finite, and we should be mindful that we will not live forever, and we had better get our lives in shape before it is too late. This is a good interpretation, but is not a fundamentalist one. The psalm says, regarding “the days that were formed for me,” every one of them. Each day of our future was written individually in God’s advance plan. In another psalm, the psalmist said that our lifespan was limited to 70 years (or, he concedes, maybe 80). I knew someone who literally believed he would drop dead on his 70^th birthday. But most fundamentalists would say that only God knows how many days we will live, and each one of us has a different number of days. This assertion is scientifically untestable (how could you ever prove that someone died on a day different than the one written on God’s secret list) but seems to be a straightforward literal interpretation of Psalm 139:16.

If fundamentalists then took this verse one step further, they would have to conclude that your number of days is predetermined, no matter what you do. Don’t bother with eating healthy food; go ahead and drink and smoke; don’t worry about hiking or walking, just go ahead and sit on the couch and listen to televangelists and Fox News all day, because it won’t make any difference. Eating vegetables will not make you live any more, and eating fat and sugar will not make you live any fewer, days. Fundamentalists generally do NOT take this interpretation. Instead they say that God made your body and you should take care of it, at least a little bit.

If God is in charge of the climate, and He is also in charge of your lifespan, why do fundamentalists tell us there is no point in working toward planetary health, but that it is important to work toward personal health? I think there is only one possible reason: they are using Genesis 8:22 as an excuse to ignore, or even be hostile toward, the science of climate change. Their fundamental beliefs therefore appear to be, “God is in charge of everything except when He isn’t,” and, “God’s truth is whatever the Republican Party says that it is.”

God is the tool of the fundamentalists. You would think that one advantage of being God is that you are in charge. But, poor little God; He has to do whatever the fundamentalists tell Him to do.

A Message I Sent to President Trump

This past week has been a banner week for global warming. We finally understand that President Trump has Godlike powers even over the weather. So, we have nothing to worry about. Trump will protect us from the consequences of global climate change.

Here is the email I sent to the White House:

“Dear President Trump,

I wish to praise you for your Godlike power, wisdom, and ability. Many Christians worship you, but I have hesitated to do so. Perhaps I should reconsider. Last week you told global warming to come back, “we need you.” And it did! In Oklahoma, where I live, it was 20 degrees, and very soon after you spoke your holy words, the temperatures increased to almost 80. The very weather obeys you! How can anyone, now, deny your Godlike power?”

I assume nobody on the White House staff will read this, certainly not Trump.

Another reason this is a banner week: Trump is appointing one of America’s most famous climate change deniers, John Christy, as his science advisor. Christy vigorously maintains that, because of his Christian faith, he will never believe that global climate change is occurring. But now he might have to reconsider whether it is God, or Trump, who controls the weather.

Even if he does read this, I doubt that Trump would catch the sarcasm.