Praying At The Pump In Petworth
The inestimable Sunfell pointed me to a fascinating story about local community activist Rocky Twyman leading prayer circles to lower gas prices up in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood. Twyman, it turns out, has been taking this show on the road for several months, congregating at gas stations across the country and asking the Lord to lower the price of regular unleaded. (I can’t wait to hear what the Prince of Petworth has to say about this.)
Twyman has done laudable work in the past helping Blacks and other minorities find and act as donor matches for leukemia and cancer cases, so you can’t rightfully say he’s completely a selfish, self-serving crank. But I think both Sunfell and this Christian blogger she linked to are correct–this “pray at the pump” idea is evidence of a larger problem with the modern evangelical movement–the idea that God somehow has such a desire for you to be happy and successful that simply praying to him and believing in him will magically manifest riches and joy at your feet. Moreover, it says something about how accustomed certain economic classes in America are to relative comfort and wealth that they can look at something like $4 gas as an apocalyptic event that needs to be stopped, rather than a sign of evolving economic, political, environmental, and social trends.
I don’t have a problem with the basic philosophy of “The Secret”–that positive thinking and visualizing the life you want to life will get you there. In fact, I agree with that. The problem is that too many people simply stop there and don’t go any further. They don’t actually take any action to make their lives better in any respect. Worse yet, they take no action to make anyone else’s life better, which is the real key to living a truly good (and Godly) life. It’s a kind of reverse egotism–”Why isn’t God granting my wish for health, wealth, and happiness?” If I were God, I’d be like, “Motherfucker, what have you done for me lately? People are starving and dying all over the world, and you’re sitting here whining because it costs you $100 to fill up your SUV? Step to the back of the line, please.”
If there’s any divine will behind the gas price crisis, I think it’s simply God (or whomever) telling us as a global culture that we’ve spent decades raping our planet’s environment and subsidizing lifestyles based on gross conspicuous consumption. We’ve fought wars and killed our fellow man to secure access to a perishable, non-renewable fuel source that pollutes our air and is monstrously inefficient, simply to satiate our desires for individual freedom or mobility. Now the bill’s coming due, and we’re not ready to accept the massive changes to our lifestyles that a post-oil economy is going to demand.
If I could tell Twyman and his ilk anything, it’d be this: Stop demanding of God that He maintain your world as it was, and start asking him about what you can do to make the world to come better. You might actually see some answers to your prayers that way.
