Reverend Graham in the Parking Lot
2010-05-11 - by
Ms. Kathleen Parker doesn’t like Reverend Franklin Graham one bit and she let him have it with both barrels in her column Sunday saying she’s delighted Graham had to do his praying in the Pentagon parking lot – on National Prayer Day – while the respectable religious leaders were doing their praying inside.
What set off this brawl?
“Graham’s offense,” Ms. Parker let fly in her column, “is expressing his belief that only Christians have God’s ear, that Islam is evil and that Muslims and Hindus don’t pray to the same God he does.”
Reverend Graham, for his part, got pretty explicit too. “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me,” he said, referring to one of the five main Hindu deities. “None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big Kumbaya service and all hold hands and it’s all going to get better in this world. It’s not going to get better.”
In other words, Franklin Graham’s belief the Hindu Elephant is a fraud got him exiled to the parking lot and Ms. Parker couldn’t agree more.
“If the whole world,” she says earnestly, “prays for a common good, will no good come of it?”
Plus, she adds, she’s got science on her side.
The neuroscientists, she says, using brain scanners have discovered “whether you’re a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim” the same parts of your brain light up during prayer. Which, of course, leads to two obvious conclusions: 1) One man’s prayer is as good as another’s; and, 2) We have a “God Gene” – meaning what we once thought of as a spiritual experience is simply a genetic human phenomenon.
Of course, all this focus on genes begs one question: Who’s listening to those prayers? Or to put it another way: How many Gods are there? One? A dozen? Or is there One God who wears a hundred different disguises and preaches a hundred different gospels – telling Christians there’s One God and at the same time telling Hindus they’re 9,000 deities?
This is no esoteric exercise in theology.
Because if Ms. Parker is right the religious leaders inside the Pentagon praying for our soldiers – to Mohammed, the Hindu Elephant and Christ – as their brains light up may all have their prayers answered.
But if Reverend Graham – for all his political insensitivity – is right then no matter what color the brain turns on an electronic imager the One God just got exiled to the Pentagon parking lot by the U.S. Army.
Reverend Graham in the Parking Lot
2010-05-11/
Ms. Kathleen Parker doesn’t like Reverend Franklin Graham one bit and she let him have it with both barrels in her column Sunday saying she’s delighted Graham had to do his praying in the Pentagon parking lot – on National Prayer Day – while the respectable religious leaders were doing their praying inside.
What set off this brawl?
“Graham’s offense,” Ms. Parker let fly in her column, “is expressing his belief that only Christians have God’s ear, that Islam is evil and that Muslims and Hindus don’t pray to the same God he does.”
Reverend Graham, for his part, got pretty explicit too. “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me,” he said, referring to one of the five main Hindu deities. “None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big Kumbaya service and all hold hands and it’s all going to get better in this world. It’s not going to get better.”
In other words, Franklin Graham’s belief the Hindu Elephant is a fraud got him exiled to the parking lot and Ms. Parker couldn’t agree more.
“If the whole world,” she says earnestly, “prays for a common good, will no good come of it?”
Plus, she adds, she’s got science on her side.
The neuroscientists, she says, using brain scanners have discovered “whether you’re a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim” the same parts of your brain light up during prayer. Which, of course, leads to two obvious conclusions: 1) One man’s prayer is as good as another’s; and, 2) We have a “God Gene” – meaning what we once thought of as a spiritual experience is simply a genetic human phenomenon.
Of course, all this focus on genes begs one question: Who’s listening to those prayers? Or to put it another way: How many Gods are there? One? A dozen? Or is there One God who wears a hundred different disguises and preaches a hundred different gospels – telling Christians there’s One God and at the same time telling Hindus they’re 9,000 deities?
This is no esoteric exercise in theology.
Because if Ms. Parker is right the religious leaders inside the Pentagon praying for our soldiers – to Mohammed, the Hindu Elephant and Christ – as their brains light up may all have their prayers answered.
But if Reverend Graham – for all his political insensitivity – is right then no matter what color the brain turns on an electronic imager the One God just got exiled to the Pentagon parking lot by the U.S. Army.