# I Pray This Often **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 6, 2022, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984 "2022-02-06T02:00:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2022, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/1 "2022-02-06T02:00:27Z")
As I am sure many of you, I worry about this country, it’s future, what happens if Donald Trump runs for POTUS, etc. And as I’ve said before, I believe in God and being good, but not much else. I do still consider myself a nominal Roman Catholic FWIW. Anyway I do still sometimes pray. Why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would care if I or anyone else prayed to Him or Her had vexed me since I was a child. But it does comfort me a little IAE. That’s when I came up with the idea of using the last stanza of _My Country 'Tis of Thee_: _Our fathers’ God, to thee,_ _Author of liberty,_ _To thee we sing;_ _Long may our land be bright_ _With freedom’s holy light._ _Protect us by thy might,_ _Great God, our King!_ Try it. It’s cathartic. By the way, something actually confuses me about the song. He prays to God, as the _‘Author of Liberty’_, an obvious reference to the Declaration of Independence and Deism. Don’t Deists reject Providence and prayers? I’m just wondering out loud. (Please don’t turn this into a debate. It isn’t 🙂 .) ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2022, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/2 "2022-02-06T02:18:19Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > I believe in God and being good, but not much else. I like that. It’s all the “else” stuff that mucks everything up. . When I had kids, I suddenly understood that old “God as a parent” concept. BUT a good parent wants autonomy and free will for their kids. And I discovered I did NOT want to protect my kids from the world. I wanted them to screw up and pay the price for it. And the bigger their mistakes, the more painful the consequences. So the bad part of that is that a loving God is not going to protect us from our bad choices. And our selfishness and stupidity is going to hurt. So, sure, pray for America. Can’t hurt. But I always wonder, can I bring myself to pray for the hearts of those who are ruining it? I try to pray for Mitch and Ted and Tucker, and even Donald, that they be blinded by a light from heaven and say “Oh, my God, how wrong I’ve been!” But it’s hard to believe they’d have enough heart to do so… ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2022, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/3 "2022-02-06T22:39:23Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > As I am sure many of you, I worry about this country, it’s future, what happens if Donald Trump runs for POTUS, etc. I’m in the UK and share your worry. Indeed over here we have a Prime Minister (equivalent to your President) who is a ‘mini-Trump’. Boris Johnson is a lying, adulterous, greedy, selfish person. Of course his party support him purely because he won an election. Sadly this shows that God does not influence elections. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2022, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/4 "2022-02-07T01:30:55Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I try to pray for Mitch and Ted and Tucker, and even Donald, that they be blinded by a light from heaven and say “Oh, my God, how wrong I’ve been!” Aha. We are praying at cross purposes here. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2022, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/5 "2022-02-07T01:33:25Z")
Okay, I’ll accept “blinded by a light from heaven that reduces them to a smoldering pile of ash” as a plan B… ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2022, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/6 "2022-02-07T01:38:40Z")
I can get behind that. 🙏 ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2022, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/7 "2022-02-08T09:39:45Z")
I’m not an organized religion devotee’. At all. I do believe there’s a higher power. If we believe in this all knowing, all seeing God, surely you must believe he knows what he’s doing. And why. To my pea brain, I gotta trust that or totally give up my belief in this higher power. It seems like bad things are always happening to good people and it’s really the only way to explain these bad things. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2022, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/8 "2022-02-08T12:30:56Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > If we believe in this all knowing, all seeing God, surely you must believe he knows what he’s doing. And why. > > To my pea brain, I gotta trust that or totally give up my belief in this higher power. I don’t know if it helps, but you could believe in a God that is not omnipotent? ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2022, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pray-this-often/958984/9 "2022-02-08T15:09:03Z")
I don’t see that “Author of Liberty” is necessarily a reference to the Declaration of Independence per se. It’s just an example of the very common phenomenon of someone claiming Divine sanction for his preferred political philosophy. Deism, as I understand it, is sort of a “God of the gaps” philosophy that held that God had created the universe (since the eighteenth century hadn’t figured out the Big Bang) but no longer actively intervenes in it (because they had figured out enough science to realize that the stuff they experienced in everyday life all followed predictable physical laws). From that point of view, prayer would seem to be useless, but I suppose you could argue that it has a positive psychological effect on the pray-er.