Prayer is nice, but ...

 

 ...it hasn't historically worked, on a societal scale, to prevent or stop wars. It pits gods against gods and truthfully, the gods could care less. Praying for peace sets one idea against another with the assumption that someone is right and someone is wrong--these being moral judgements. Whose morals are are often suspect.

 Image via altfg.com

 

Does this advocate for war? Not in the least. But let's face it, since the birth of religion, prayer have done nothing to stop wars.

Timeline of wars

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The timeline of wars has been split up in the following periods:

• List of wars: before 1000
• List of wars: 1000–1499
• List of wars: 1500–1799
• List of wars: 1800–1899
• List of wars: 1900–1944
• List of wars: 1945–1989
• List of wars: 1990–2002
• List of wars: 2003–present

I'm sure for most of these wars there were priests/priestesses and commoners praying for peace, or perhaps to win. And yet, century after century proved that the gods do not rule the wars of man.

What's the solution? 

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/peace-protests-dallas-response/

 

“Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.” – Mohandas Gandhi

The Salt March

Suffrage Parade

Delano Grape Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Singing Revolution

 Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world

Ultimately, she would like our history books to pay greater attention to nonviolent campaigns rather than concentrating so heavily on warfare. “So many of the histories that we tell one another focus on violence – and even if it is a total disaster, we still find a way to find victories within it,” she says. Yet we tend to ignore the success of peaceful protest, she says.

“Ordinary people, all the time, are engaging in pretty heroic activities that are actually changing the way the world – and those deserve some notice and celebration as well.”

Relying on prayer to end wars, as many do, creates a false hope, instills inaction, and encourages mindless repetition, and solves nothing.

Perhaps the solution is not prayer, but to rise up in nonviolent actions.