Dear God, please don't let me have terminal hemorrhoids!

Let Us Pray
By Joseph Walther


Oh dear God, please help me through this night and I promise that I’ll get through the next one on my own. Yes, prayer is in the news again. So is South Dakota’s new tough anti-abortion bill. Of course, our nation’s news media both print and electronic, ever striving to keep us at the forefront of trivial pursuits, loves to print this crap. Permit me to give you folks another perspective.

Some group paid a total of $2.4 million on an attempt to test the power of prayer on post-operative cardiac bypass-surgery patients. They took 1,800 patients and divided them up into three groups. People were “assigned” to pray for two of the groups. The first group knew about the prayers, but the second one didn’t. The third group didn’t even know that a study of such magnitude was going on. By the way, the praying folks had a deadline of 14-days to do their praying.

I know that the suspense has to be killing you readers. So, here is the result of this $2.4 million study. It’s a toss-up. Statistically speaking, the spirit in charge of post-operative complications obviously did not hear about the study. Members from all three groups experienced complications and the distribution was dangerously close to normal.

Does this mean that you should throw away your rosary beads, bibles, or all other means of communicating with the Big Guy? Well, of course it doesn’t! First, I did not see anything in the study to account for the occasional medical blunder or drunken surgeon. We’ll have to await the lawyers’ report for that part. Second, I don’t think anyone even thought of the possibility that the Big Guy may not look favorably on deadlines.

Besides this, even though well-intentioned folks disagree over whether or not prayer helps the situation, if medical science has done all that it can, there is not a shred of scientific evidence that it hurts anything. So, pray like there’s no tomorrow if you believe that it helps.

A bigger question, at least in my mind, is who worries about this stuff. Personally, I think that there are two small groups out there. One is outwardly avid in deity belief but inwardly so weak in conviction that its members grab at anything resembling validation, even if they have to make it up. The other group is comprised of the non-believers, who are just as outwardly avid, every bit as conviction-weak, and in the same throes of validation malnourishment. Either way, both groups seem to have the attention of a news media that seems obsessed with flicking fly shit out of pepper and convincing us that it’s important.

I’ll tell you what. I’m already in the process of requesting $2 million from Congress to study why gorillas have such large nostrils. Frankly, I have a hunch that it’s because they have such large fingers, but this study will finally confirm the hunch and put the matter to rest so that we can all move on with our lives. As an added incentive for Congress to approve my grant request, I’ll throw in a side study to see if there’s sufficient justification for a taxpayer funded support group for such worrisome people. We could call it the Fraternity of the Incurably Baffled or, if you’d prefer, FIB.

Meanwhile, out in good old conservative South Dakota, the state’s legislature has enacted the mother lode of all abortion bills. This one outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, unless the mother’s life is in danger. Doctors who are convicted of assisting in abortions could go to prison for five years. The ban passed by a margin of almost 2 to 1 in the state Senate and by a margin of almost 3 to 1 in the state House. The Governor signed it into law, fully expecting a court challenge from opponents.

Guess what? Those opponents decided not to go to court. Instead, they are going directly to the voters to force a referendum. In less than two weeks, they have garnered over a third of the signatures needed to force the issue, with huge numbers of people waiting in line to sign the petition, most advocating opposition to the ban. OOPS!

It seems that South Dakota’s General Assembly forgot to consider that the majority of people in this country, whether they support abortion rights or not, consider the matter private and want the government to stay out of it. Reading many of the quotes from even the staunchest conservatives in South Dakota, makes me believe that South Dakotans are no different.

Here’s a note to politicians everywhere. Keep your hypocritical noses out of things that do not concern you. We the people have unwittingly turned things over to self-serving lobbyists, both locally and nationally. Some of you know this; and you’re the same ones who would sell your own children for the right price. In the short term, this is quite a mess for us. Give us the right incentive, though, and we’ll fix it. You can take this to the bank.

You are not fooling all of the people, not even some of the time. We are members of the largest and potentially most powerful lobbing group that this country has ever known. You probably know us by our formal name: Your Constituents. Don’t piss us off. If you do, we’ll organize and drop kick your cocky butts back to where ever you came from.

You know, it’s one thing to screw us with silly spending on stupid crap. We’ll even let you raise our taxes, up to a point. You want to go on those [wink] [wink] fact-finding trips. No problem. You want to stand ankle-deep in semen in orgasmic oblivion. No problem. We’ve become so accustomed to all of your crap that almost nothing shocks us any more.

The operant term is “almost.” Your attempts to impose your personal moralities on the rest of us both shocks and angers us. With whom we have legitimate sex, how we deal with our externally imposed personal life and death tragedies, and the manner in which we deal with child bearing are matters of personal conscience and none of your business.

We have several legitimate sources if we feel compelled to seek moral guidance. The United States Congress, White House, and all fifty State General Assemblies, many members of which display the intellect of celery and integrity of hyenas, have missed that list by light-years.

Have a great week. And, speaking of being ankle-deep in semen, it’s Spring break time again, so be careful. The Catholic Church could excommunicate me for saying that. Oh, wait… it’s too late; I forgot. OOPS!

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.