Why prayers aren’t working

I spoke about this in a recent column because it seems like every day, some religious group or an individual who recently dusted off their religious book is being quoted as telling us that we need to “pray for Trinidad and Tobago.” Religion and prayer in Trinbago is now a fad; everyone wants to be quoted as having religious views to show them as being spiritually grounded. In regards to the problems we’re having as a country, praying only assuages the same negative emotions that we need to motivate us to change the things we need to change in this country. In other words, prayer causes us to be docile and pliant, when we need to regain the ability to be outraged, fed up and damn vex enough to get up and go out to do something about the clueless people on top.

Just look at other countries; those people organise and protest any and everything, whilst we sit by and pray.

The citizens in other countries get results, whilst we are fed and swallow the same crap, whilst asking God to change our diet before the next meal of nonsense.

So why exactly is our country spiralling downwards despite all this prayer? Isn’t God a Trini? Or did He renounce His citizenship? Why isn’t He helping us by answering our prayers? Well, the answer is simple: we don’t deserve it.

We love to talk about prayer, yet we are a vengeful people who love injustice when it is convenient to justify behaviour and rhetoric. We allow the government to trample upon the rights of many people in the name of national security without saying a word. We boast of the bacchanalia called Carnival of which debauchery is an integral part and pray for God to keep us safe on the road while we wine and drink. We refuse to recognise the rights of the homosexual community because “God said so.” Our prisons are a cesspool of injustice and all we do is justify the way prisoners are treated at the Remand Yard. The accused languish in prisons for years, many of whom walk free, and we are angry at the outcome, but not in the least bothered by the decade a man just lost due to an inefficient system.

How in any deity’s name can we expect our country to be blessed when this is what we have to offer? The so-called religious leaders and people in this country treat religion like a cafeteria or a place like El Pecos where they pick and choose the tastiest parts of their holy books to consume and disseminate in furtherance of their causes. If people believe that their religious book was written by their infallible deity, how then do they throw out some of their deity’s rules because of convenience? In very simple terms, it is hypocrisy.

These religious zealots do not have the moral authority to pray for or with anyone because one cannot condone injustice and call for the blood of prisoners via hangings in Woodford Square, while at the same time asking for the “blood of Jesus” to be applied on our country.

Cafeteria religious people have crusades and days of prayer and fasting, while they look on in amusement at unconvicted men packed into cells like sardines and forced to sleep on cold hard concrete floors. How dare we ask any deity to bless us when we cannot even love our own compatriots — literally.

So, when religious people support unjust laws that ensure people are imprisoned automatically for 120 days, how dare they ask for justice for others in society? When religious people cherry- pick their scriptures out of context and refuse to give rights to homosexuals who want to love whomever they choose, but at the same time pray to “bring the love back” to Trinidad and Tobago, it is an insult to any deity who preaches love. People who invoke God at any given opportunity to push religion as the only solution to our problems whilst supporting and implementing all sorts of injustices do not deserve to have their prayers answered. We really need to stop wasting time by praying to these deities when we are not ready to receive the blessings.

Until we are ready to treat our own properly and with love, no blessings will be falling upon Tr i n i - dad and Tob a go anytime s o o n .

And if you don’t b e l i e v e me, just read your s c r i p - tures.