A contributor recently opined that I failed to understand my own opinion submission, “When prayer becomes the target.” I’m bemused to have someone explain my own thoughts back to me, and yet get them wrong!
This is a matter of epistemology. That’s a fancy word for how we know what we know — what counts as truth, what we accept and what we dismiss. Christians believe prayer is real because God is real; atheists dismiss prayer because they’ve already ruled God out. It all comes down to this: faith versus unbelief. That is the heart of the divide and explains why we talk past each other when tragedy strikes.
For those who don’t believe in God, prayer is not just ineffective, it’s worthless. For secularists, only political action counts. That’s why the four prayer cynics I cited responded as they did. They all dismissed prayer. But dismissing prayer is no neutral act; it is a worldview that insults every believer who knows prayer is the first and most powerful defense against evil. That is why Christians reject the epistemology of atheism.
The critics demand that we trade prayer for political action, but let’s be clear about what that really means: gun control. They want us to surrender our constitutional rights. That is unacceptable. Stripping law-abiding citizens of the right to self-defense will not stop evil men from killing; it will only leave more innocents defenseless.
Prayer and the Second Amendment are not the problem. Evil is the problem, and faith and freedom are the answer. And after watching Charlie Kirk get murdered for exercising his First Amendment right, you better believe I’ll never give up my Second.
I trust this settles the charge that I somehow missed the point of caustic secularists who cynically demeaned prayer after a Catholic church shooting.
