Skeptacles (pt. 2)

Ahhhh... Another Sunday and loving the fact that I am Jamaican. The Jamaican track and field team has dominated once again and Jamaican patriotism has been at an all time high this week. What a wonderful feeling.  

So, last week we spoke a bit about Jamaica's religiosity and how it's affecting the lives of Jamaicans and Jamaica as a country.  We peeked into the lives of sister Hyacinth, which unfortunately is not doing any better than she was before.  To be honest she is even more worried than before because although the church was praying for her recovery her diagnosis from the doctor unfortunately didn't come with "divine" intervention or intercession and her liver is almost completely shut down. She will need to have a liver transplant or she may be not live beyond this year's end. My heart goes out to her and her family.  I can see she has gone back to church again today because she honestly believes that she is a good person and has been through so much in life.  With her personal belief in having a relationship with God and her pastor's constant religious ministrations, Sister Hyacinth truly believes she will be OK. 

Now I understand believing or having faith in pulling through the most dire of situations because of divine intervention if you are a religious or spiritual person, but I can't understand why she is not actively reaching out to her family to see if anyone is interested in being tested to see if they are a donor match for her and if they would help in saving her life.  Praying every day seems to be the way that Jamaicans like Sister Hyacinth and most religious people deal with serious life changing issues.  It pains me sometimes to see and know that Jamaicans are so indoctrinated and borderline narcissistic in thinking personal prayer request to a God sitting in the clouds is the preferred method to problem solving. Why do people really pray, and does prayer really work? Those are the question most Jamaicans need to ask themselves in order to exact change in their lives.  So let put on these Skeptacles for a minute and so we can see things for what they really are not for what we want to believe them to be. 

Prayer. Such a powerful thing in the Jamaican life and experience.  We grow up learning how to pray in church and from our parents. We learn to ask for things in life from a God that knows us personally. Down to every follicle of hair on our very heads.  It's such a wonderful fulling to believe that we are being protected and cradled personally by a all powerful God.  The being that created us all and loves us unconditionally.  (Inhales deeply... Then exhales). That feeling is good isn't it? It's the same feeling you can get from so many other things in life; like finding someone you are in love with, knowing that you have the winning hand at a game of dominoes, winning the lottery when you know your lights are about to get disconnected tomorrow or getting that new job that will bring home some much needed money in your life.  It's such a wonderful feeling isn't it? That's the feeling prayer gives to you. A feelings of connection and release.  A feeling of calm and belief that everything will be OK tomorrow.  The problem with that is that the feeling of elation, calm or         all-will-be-right-with-the-world, is just a feeling that our minds produce on its own to help deal with the hardships of life. 

For us as Jamaicans to believe that prayer works we will have to believe that we and our personal prayers are better than everyone else's prayer in the world.  We would have to accept the fact that we are so misguided by religion and narcissistic that we actually believe that our personal prayers should be answered by a God.  Think about it for a minute. I often get so annoyed with people when they say things like: "Thank God for making me win the lottery because I really needed the money." or "Thank God for saving my life from pneumonia because I though I would die in that hospital."  Have you thought about it enough? Now let's look at this clearly. There are so many children out there starving every day in Jamaica. There are so many women being beaten and abused.  So many children being raped daily by some man in their family or community that is praying every day just like you for help from the same God you are expecting to answer your prayers. Their prayers don't get answered because they are still being abused and staving.  The innocent children are still getting raped every day but you win the lottery and actually believe that God believes that your light bill was more important than all the other prayers.  Please understand how narcissistic you have to be to believe that your prayers are more important. 

So why was your prayers answered and not the starving children or children being raped? Hmm? Maybe it was their fault right? Maybe they are not Christians or in God's favour, right?  How many Christian families do you know of that suffer every day that are praying every day and their prayers are not being answered but your prayer is being answered why? You barely go to church and you only pray when you might need something in your life so why your prayers and not others? I can tell you. It's because prayers don't work. There is no one sitting on any cloud answering personal prayers for some and not others.  We need to stop thinking that prayers are a fix all for our problems in life.  We need to let go of this religious narcissism and start living in this real world. We can allow religion to distort the truth in our lives.  Your prayers are not more important than anyone else.  We exact change in our own lives when we work hard at changing our own lives.  Some people don't have the means to change their lives on their own. We tell our children if they they just believe and pray then their problems will be solved. So why are we losing so many of our children to violence, to hunger and to pain?  

Prayer does not work. It only gives us a false sense of security that things will be handled by divine intervention and intercession but the truth is our lives will only be changed by us. It will only be changed by people helping people.  Stop waiting for the lord to heal the world and focus on healing yourself.  Tell your children that if they are being hurt and abused to tell someone not tell the lord because if they are telling the lord and praying to have the abuse end and it's still happening it's either the lord does not care about them or their is no lord there to receive their prayers. Either way we need to break this cycle of divine dependency.  We need to take hold of our lives.   

So let's tell Sister Hyacinth that although she is praying for divine healing, she should try to look for help here on earth.  She should try all she can do to save her own life.  We need to start looking at the world differently.  Take off the religious eye wear and put on these "skeptacles" and see life as it really is.  Ask yourself this question when you have time to today; "Are my prayers more important than everyone else's prayers in Jamaica?" "Am I that selfish and narcissistic to believe that there is a God that is watching over me personally and not watching over the innocent children dying every day and being abused every day by the hands of a predator?"  If you can honestly answer yes, my problems are more important than everyone else's, then you are losing your humanity and have a serious deficiency in empathy and morality.  

I have to finish making my Sunday dinner,  you know how us Jamaicans like to cook a big meal on Sunday lol, so let's catch up next week and talk more about your empathy, morality and why most people in Jamaica are morally superior to the God of the bible.  Yes I just said that.

To be continued...

Guest blogger Peter-John Williams