Theatrical

 

I am not active on Facebook but I do follow it a bit. American Column, whatever group they are, posts on Facebook regularly, but they posted a prayer to God, maybe written with art by someone name Stefany—at least that was the name on the prayer with the art behind it, nicely presented but I was not happy with the prayer. Here it is: “I love God. Even though I deserve nothing, He gave me everything.”

 

My response: The person saying the prayer loves God, and that is good for two reasons. First, she believes in God and happiness in this world and the next, largely is predicated upon believing in God and then developing a friendship with God. Second, she loves God and that means not only does God love her—always did in some objective sense—but now God loves her personally because He has been invited by her to love Him, because she says she loves him and I believe her statement.

 

The rest of the prayer: Even though I deserve nothing, He gave me everything. I think that being God’s friend and believing in and loving him will elicit a loving, rewarding set of gifts in an unfair exchange, but God is so rich that He is not worried about equal exchanges of gifts.

 

What bothers me is the assumption that some Christians make that they deserve nothing from God. I am a fairly accomplished amateur theologian but I am not versed enough to know if Jesus set up a covenant with believers---He probably did (The New Testament implied or stated covenant would be something like, I Jesus Christ, died on the cross for you for free of charge so that your sins could be forgiven, but in exchange you need to surrender your life to me, invite me into your life, and have faith in me, so you can live in heaven after death.). I do know that Yahweh in the Old Testament set up a contract between Himself and the Hebrews that He would be their God, and they were to worship him and be faithful to him in exchange.

 

Now if the good deities of the Bible set up covenants with believers, it seems to me that two parties to a covenant get something of value for in return giving and exchanging something of value with the divinity that wrote the contract. I would not say and I do not believe any of the good deities would say that humans deserve nothing. They would not permit that humans could be greedy or unreasonable in their demands, but humans do deserve some gifts from the god they serve. Humans do not deserve everything they wish for all the time in just the way that they demand (We should never demand of Jesus or the other gods that they owe us something; they do, but we need to be respectful and ask not demand. They are powerful and we do not want to be on the receiving end of their wrath.)

 

We do have free will, and if we choose to lead good spiritual and good moral lives, as commanded of us by our controlling good deities, we should be and will be rewarded a bit in this world and more in the next world. This too is a covenant, and it in no way implies that we deserve nothing. It is nice of God to give us everything, but we do not deserve that though we sure appreciate it—I hope, and give thanks.

 

The tone of the prayer is too theatrical, too extreme, too emotional in an offensive way to the contacted deity, way over the top and somehow seems to manipulate God. The petitioner casts God in this artificial role as extremely munificent to an unworthy, sinful, far inferior creature deserving nothing but getting everything.

 

There is a self-aggrandizement in this prayer—almost virtue signaling—a masochistic, self-abasement that seems phony, for public consumption as ‘’see how humble I am before God, but I am really in good with the guy upstairs”.

 

God is moderate and well-mannered and does not like to be manipulated into a corner or forced to play some role assigned by us to Him, based on our preferences for how He is and interacts with us.

 

The deities are leaders of the benevolent collective, but these shepherds and shepherdesses are also Individuators. They are also authors and administrators of the law of moderation. They want their subjects, us, to not be disrespectful, insouciant, or insubordinate, but nor do they want us to grovel, insisting we are dirt beneath the deity’s feet, deserving nothing.

 

Rather we are to love Jesus and the others as we love ourselves, as friends, and Jesus is above us but we communicate as friends to this great Friend and Savior of ours.