I end today with a prayer, stolen from a website called Mission 24 – Finding God. I’m not actually praying this prayer because, quite frankly, it’s nonsense and gobbledegook, but I do have some thoughts about it. Anyway, here’s the prayer:
“Heavenly Father, I thank you that you love me and gave your Son, Jesus, to die in my place for my sins.
Thank you.
I am sorry for the things I have done wrong and I turn from them to follow you.
I believe you raised Jesus from the dead, and I boldly confess that Jesus is Lord. Please save me now, come into my heart, and change my life.
I will love you and serve you as long as I live.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I am constantly trying to be a better person although that has nothing directly to do with religion, but I am trying – very trying, is what many people say about me – to be more tolerant. I don’t do God and unlike David Baddiel, I don’t want to do God.
As a non-believer, I don’t believe that God, who I don’t believe in, sent his son to Earth to die for me, not least because the alleged Jesus of Nazareth would have died almost 2000 years before I was even born. I am sorry for the things I have done wrong, but they were my fault and had nothing to do with God. If anyone deserves an apology, it’s anyone and everyone I have ever wronged.
I don’t believe that if he ever lived in the first place that he didn’t survive his death. I don’t understand how God can be God and Jesus can be my Lord and if he hasn’t been able to save me now, come into my heart and change my life, I doubt that he ever will, unless he can offer me some therapy for the near 57 varieties of mental illness that I have to put up with. I’m not serving anyone, “in Jesus’ name” or anyone else’s.
I know a few believers and they are among the finest people I know. For all I know, they may well share the prayer from Mission 24. Well, good for them because to the best of my knowledge they don’t inflict it on me. I keep quoting the great Dave Allen who always ended his TV show with the words, “May your God go with you.” I’m definitely coming round to that point of view and I do hope that theists will soon stop sharing all that “Heavenly Father” stuff. In my world, they are welcome to keep it to themselves because then I could keep my atheism to myself, too.
