Prometheus 6   

The world isn't disintegrating before our eyes anymore than it disintegrated before our parents eyes, their parents eyes, or their parents before them or theirs before them. Was the great Chicago Fire of 1871, the sinking of the Titanic, Hurricane Isabel, the Challenger disaster, the 6,000 people who died in the 1999 Turkish earthquake, the Holocaust, the 8.5 million people killed during World War I (the "war to end all wars"), the 19 million killed during WWII (combat, civillian & military alone), the 1.6 million Blacks who were killed in Rwanda and Burnei between 1959-95, the 1.5 million who died from war, drought and forced relocation in Ethiopia, the 2,700,000 left homeless by Hurricane Mitch, the 14,000 Native Americans who were marched on foot 1,200 miles in the infamous "Trail of Tears" where 4,000 died from hunger exposure and disease, the 3.9 million people killed during the US Civil War, not to mention the estimated 9-11 million Africans who were enslaved with the conservative estimate of 1.5 million whose bodies were strewn across the Atlantic during the Middle Passage.....does our anonymous author consider these tragedies and atrocities of global and domestic history, too, to be the result of God backing out of our lives because of the relatively recent unconstitutionality of prayer in Horace Greeley Public School?

That's why I find such hysteria about "September 11th happened because we turned our backs on God" to be absolutely ludicrous. September 11th happened because of a lot of reasons, mainly because men of different religious convictions couldn't get along with each other, not because we couldn't get along with God. And as horrific as the events of September 11th were to all of us (including myself, who watched the towers fall from my Brooklyn rooftop not knowing that 2 of my friends were inside), it is but a mere blip on the tragedies and atrocities of history, whether it be that of the world or that of our country.

It has always been the collective spiritual narcissim of this country, especially after the end of the Cold War, that Americans assumed that we were immune to the kind of trials and tribulations that affect the rest of the world, that we as a so-called "Christian nation" would not have to deal with the traumas of a complex world. It has always been the height of religious arrogance that allowed many Americans assume that God's dispensation of protection was reserved for us with a "Prayed in the U.S.A." patch, where all He had to do was look for the Christian union label. But now that the so-called hammer has dropped, startled folk who've been napping in the pews are now trying to find all kinds of nonsense to "blame" for "what's happening in the world today."

Dare I say it, too many Christains and believers put their faith in the wrong things and their energies in the wrong places. What good is prayer in schools when families aren't praying together at home? What good is having the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse (where they have no place anyway) when most Christians confine their Biblical study to the Verse-of-the-Day at Sunday service..if they make to church at all? What good is jumping up and down and stomping ecclesiastical feet about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket when so many Christians contribute to the basket weaving with their sour attitudes, lack of Christian charity toward the sick & afflicted, and their superior judgement of others?