Kareem speaks up for prayer

Sometimes I think of the great Kareem Abdul Jabar as the last rational man standing. He has studied so hard to come to a rational view of the world and society in which he lives; he seems to ask, why won't the rest of us understand what intellect and inquiry says is obvious?

So it is delicious when Kareem turns his very good brain to prayer in our lives: 

... Following the Minnesota shootings last week that left two children dead and 17 people wounded, former White House Press Secretary under Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, commented that sending “thoughts and prayers” wasn’t doing enough to stem the gun violence plaguing America. Said Psaki: “Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Psaki was articulating what most people outside the gun lobbies and the GOP politicians paid off by the gun lobbies have been saying for years. The states with the highest rates of gun deaths per capita are all red states: Mississippi, Louisiana, and Wyoming. While those states spend so much time making sure women have no say over their own bodies, they spend relatively little time or effort curtailing gun violence. They pass strict laws when it comes to abortion, but when it comes to the violent deaths in their states, they rely on prayer. And the bodies keep piling up.

White House Communications Secretary Steven Cheung sounded very un-Christian when he posted about Psaki: “You are a disgusting human being. I hope you circle back with an apology.” Does this seem like a man who prays at all (except for the swift and painful deaths of his political enemies)? After Trump declared Washington, D.C. to be crime-ridden, why didn’t he and his administration, instead of sending in armed National Guard soldiers, form a prayer circle to pray away the crime?

Because Cheung and Leavitt are in the business of rabid deflecting, they hope to turn Psaki’s reasonable comment into some anti-religious screed. What they fail to acknowledge about people of faith is that they can both pray and take actions to curtail the violence. 

They fail to understand that people may be praying not just for divine intervention, but also for the strength and wisdom to address the problem right here, right now. 

This country was built by many deeply religious people, but they didn’t wait around for their god to build a railroad or deliver cures for diseases: they got off their knees and did the difficult work themselves. Their devotion inspired their deeds.

Psaki did not fault people who pray; she just pointed out that prayer in itself will not solve this problem. 

Prayer helps the devout to connect with their core values and to manifest those values in their communities. To suggest otherwise—as Leavitt and Cheung do—insults the intelligence of all people of faith.  

I can go with that.