We're Getting Prayer All Wrong
Late last month, Kevin Smith, patron saint of bearded nerds everywhere, suffered a massive heart attack. Thankfully, he survived, and, lying in his hospital bed, passed the time by sharing a photo of himself on Twitter, looking bewildered but happy to be alive. The actor Chris Pratt responded with kind words. “Kevin” he wrote, “we don’t know each other too good but I have loved you since Clerks and I’m praying my ass off for your cause I believe in the healing power of prayer. Can you please pray with me people!?” Attached were two emojis, one of hands clasped in prayer and the other of a heart.
You’ll be shocked to hear that Twitter, that peaceable haven of calm and goodwill, erupted in outrage and scorn. “That’s cool and everything,” one of Pratt’s followers tweeted back contemptuously, “but Doctors and nurses save lives not prayer.” Many more soon followed suit, deriding the idea of prayer as not only primitive but also somehow grossly negligent: Praying, the online mob seemed to argue, is something you do when you’re too inept or lazy to actually solve a problem.