Pray at the Pump: A Report Card
It has been nearly three months now since Rocky Twyman, choir director from the Washington, D.C., and company started the “Pray at the Pump” movement. Pray at the pumpers have been gathering at gas stations across the country to pray for God to help lower the cost of gasoline since politicians have been unable to curb the steep climb.
So what is the result of three months of work? Has God stepped in, slapped the people of OPEC around a bit, and eased gasoline prices heading into the peak summer months? Well, the national average for a gallon of gasoline in the United States on April 1st was about $3.33. As of this writing, it is now hovering around $4.05, for a whopping 21.6% increase in less than three months! I can think of a few explanations:
- God didn’t answer their prayers. Maybe he doesn’t care or He isn’t listening. Or maybe He is rolling around in Heaven laughing at the requests.
- God answered their prayers with a resounding “No” and they haven’t received the memo yet.
- God is an angry God and was insluted by such trivial requests. As a result, He decided to raise gas prices even more!
- God is powerless to answer prayers. Might explain a lot more than just this.
- God is not the God of Christianity but some other God, like Islam, and ignores the requests of Christians since they will be burning in hell anyway for their infidelity.
- God does not exist.
Did I miss any? Which one do you think is correct?
How about this. Rather than standing around holding hands and silently (or not!) pleading with an invisible God to do things for us, which never seems to be successful anyways, why don’t we actually try and do something about it ourselves? I call this a genie in the bottle mentality. Ask and thy shall receive. If I were God, this is what I would tell these people: Solve your own damn problems.
Christians believe that God, in His infinite wisdom, created the world according to His divine plan. Everything that follows, therefore, must be a part of His divine plan. After all, if things were not going as planned then how could He be God? An incopetent God, maybe, but not the God Christians believe in. Therefore, high gas prices must be a part of God’s divine plan. So what makes these people think that God would change His plan just beacuse they, ignorant as they are in God’s mysterious ways, don’t like it?
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
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Maybe God’s answer is “wait”. Yes, no and wait covers pretty much every base…
Or perhaps God hasn’t answered the prayers because they are selfish (lowering gas prices so people gain personal wealth). I can’t believe there is a religious movement for gas prices. Now that’s funny!
Or maybe, gas prices would be $10/gallon by now if Christians weren’t praying! You really don’t know, do you? It seems to me that in this situation you cannot logically say the prayers of Christians are not working!
(although I am a Christian, I’m not the “pray at the pump” type, and I’d rather take the approach of trusting God to provide the finances I need for life).
Hey John,
You are right, I don’t know. But I can still say that the prayers of Christians are not working. They are not praying for God to curb the rise of gas prices. They are not even praying for God to stabilize gas prices. They are praying for God to *lower* gas prices. Gas prices have not gone down. They have gone up 21%. Ergo, these prayers have not been answered.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by
But effectively, if gas prices go up less than they WOULD have, they’ve been lowered, right? They’re lowered relative to what they would have been (in a prayer-less case). Maybe the problem with Christians praying for lower gas prices is that God can answer in ways that are surprising and seem contradictory….Christians don’t have to acknowledge God’s answer to their prayers for them to still have been answered! God is, after all, bigger than we are and our puny minds and understandings may not quite be up to the task of understanding His ways (that’s Biblical, anyway).
Just a thought.
John
[...] the end of June I posted a progress report for Rocky Twyman and his “Pray at the Pump” movement. If you recall, Twyman and a small [...]