National Day of Prayer vs. the Freedom From Religion Foundation

JP - I just looked at the ffrf (freedom from religion foundation) website and contrary to c's assertion it looks like not just people who don't want to be bothered by religion but rather it portrays a group dedicated to removing religion from every aspect of society using any possible means including lawsuits, pressuring public officials, satire, mockery, historical revisionism, subject conflation and outright falsehoods. That said, I thank God for ffrf and the attention they have brought to the NDoP (National Day of Prayer). Finally, in a sense, religion is what you do consistently or to put it another way, religiously. Thus we all have a religion. A religion of purposeless meaningless no-reason for existence may justify inherent selfishness but just ask yourself if the religion of no-reason is really satisfying intellectually, philosophically or personally. We all search for the biggest thing in universe. The theist answer is God. The atheist answer is self. The practical outworking of believing that I am the most important thing is evident in the disintegration of society.

SP - But isn't God all powerful? If society is disintegrating, isn't God allowing it? Maybe it's what he wants.

JP - God's power is not reduced by his patience.
Not stopping something is not the same as wanting it to happen.
The stop-think employed by SP is Orwellian.

SP - Then what is God actually doing?

JP - He is patient, hopeful and kind. Patiently hoping that men and women will let Him give them rest. The rest of a clean conscience. Rest from guilt. He is kind enough to give good things even to those that hate Him. The sun and rain, freedom, choice, minds to think with, all come from Him, given out of kindness even when none is returned.

SP - Yes, but what about the bad things, why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people?

JP - God's point of view is eternity therefore what He considers evil can vary significantly from what we consider evil. Every inconvenience and thwart to our will can feel evil but can actually be for our ultimate good or could just be because stuff happens and we're not the center of the universe. His purpose is our highest good and that can vary significantly from our perceived good. This is the sticking point, to trust or to revile? If it helps, any God worth the name has to be bigger than we can understand.

SP - So we don't know what God considers evil, and he's bigger than we can understand, so why pray to him? Or worship him? Why would he care?

If his plan is already decided then it doesn't matter what we do, because that's what was going to happen anyway.

JP - God's purpose is our highest good. To that end He gave us free will. The inexorable abuse of that gift was also covered by Jesus' death in our place. The ball (sorry calvinists) is in our court. To accept that, though we don't deserve it, God has gone to great lengths to enter into relationship with us or to reject the possibility of relating to the eternal, omnipotent, immanent, holy God. Simple curiosity should lead us to at least ask if this is possible.

SP - But how do you know that Christianity is right and say, Islam, is wrong? There are clearly some contradictions between the two.

JP - I'm not an islamic scholar so if I'm gravely mistaken I apologize but as I understand it Islam basically says that if you are really good and do things right you might get to heaven. In contrast, Christianity states that no one is good enough but God would rather die (cross) than leave us that way therefore not because of anything we do or don't do we can have forgiveness and enter into relationship with Him.

Constitutional commentary

The constitution was written to detail the limited powers of the federal government. The intent was to proscribe the actions of politicians and justices never to limit the freedom of citizens. The bill of rights was a controversial addendum precisely because it muddied the intent of the document by addressing rights of citizens rather than limits of government. The bill of rights was never intended to limit the free actions of people, rather it delineates, as examples, the sorts of things that the federal government is not allowed to stick its nose into.
Philosophically, in exchanges between divergent powers the more powerful gives to the less. The constitution empowers citizens by making them the grantor of limited authorities to the federal government. Which granting also means that upon these authorities abuse they can be revoked. The common misconception of the government as a grantor of certain liberties is exactly what the framers were trying to get away from. Let us please have no more talk about constitutional rights, since the idea is upside down. Let us rather speak about renewing our commitment to limiting the power of the juggernaut that once was and ought to be our, the people's, servant.