Facebook Follies: What Would Happen If We Didn't Pray

One of my evangelical friends is raving on Facebook about a video promoting the National Day of Prayer on May 5. And not raving how inane it is, but raving how lovely and powerful it is. "It will give you chills!"

The video asks will tell us What Would Happen If We Didn't Pray to God?.

Well, of course, I had to watch that!  Because knowing what would happen if we didn't pray seems to be something I should know for sure. My own thoughts were along the lines of, "Well, if people didn't pray, they'd have more time to do things that were actually effective. And they'd have more money to spend on more practical things than churches dedicated to an invisible magic man." But, being a skeptic, I wanted to see what the evidence showed. Maybe there is something more. And there is!

SPOILER ALERT

First of all, I'd never considered that if we didn't pray, people would end up sitting in their church pews doing nothing. And that the minister wouldn't have a blessed thing to do but stand in front of his congregation holding an invisible book and looking befuddled. Well, duh! What's wrong with me that I didn't think of that?! Clearly, we'd still need to build churches to do nothing in.

In addition, if you don't pray, God then has some kind of hissy fit which He demonstrates by sending big masses of dark storm clouds.

And you know this isn't your ordinary storm with big masses of dark storm clouds, because this time, God also provides a soundtrack of melodramatic background music. That's something that you don't get to hear every storm.

I was on the edge of my seat at this point and didn't know how much more of the suspense, ("Oh my, what will happen?!") I could take.

Thank goodness, we're shown the evidence of the power of prayer!

And what happens after you grab your Bible and rush to a church to start praying because you're worried about all those dark clouds, not to mention the epic-battle music?:  A massive thunderstorm develops over the U.S. Capitol and those masses of dark clouds cover the sky over the Golden Gate bridge. Wow! And...a big sunny hole opens up in the clouds over your church.

There's more! If you scrunch up your face and look really seriously sincere when you pray, blue skies and sunshine eventually appear over your church and over Golden Gate.

Then, you get to see swirly snow over a big mountain!!!

But meanwhile, back in Washington, while the clouds have lifted a bit, there are still black clouds and lots of lightning high above the Capitol. Oh, no! Are people ever able to pray away the storm there?

Alas, the video keeps you hanging and ends without showing the Capitol's fate. And, oh dear, the soundtrack doesn't change to nice, peaceful, "all-is-well" music. Uh-oh. That can't be good.

Maybe the video makers are planning a sequel.