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JOHN STONESTREET WITH DAVID CARLSON |
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That’s exactly what Vice-President Mike Pence decided to do. An official White House photo from February 26 captured the Vice-President and the Coronavirus Task Force /opening their meeting with heads /bowed in prayer. The photo, as they say nowadays, blew up the Internet, unleashing a tidal wave of “prayer shaming,” a term coined a couple of years ago to describe ridiculing people who dare offer their “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of tragedies like mass shootings.
One secular research website headlined the photo with this take: “Symbolic of the moral and intellectual decay at the White House, a photo shows Vice President Mike Pence and his team trying to pray away the coronavirus.” Pence and his team were “wallowing in ignorant superstition and willful ignorance,” the site continued, suggesting that Pence prays because he’s a “religious extremist.”
Another slant, this one from an out-and-proud atheist: “It’s not a joke when people say these Republicans are trying to stop a virus with prayer. What else did anyone expect? Science? Reason? Something sensible?”
One of the most viral tweets of the photo had this caption: “Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so [blanked].”
Never mind that every session of Congress begins with a prayer, as do thousands of public meetings /across the country /every day. Prayer is, for many today, politically unacceptable, seen as an affront to science, an obstacle to governance, and worst of all, a shameful admission that we are not in control of our own destinies. |
Of
course, that’s precisely the point of prayer.
We are not in control.
We
think we are.
We’ve made remarkable medical, scientific, and
technological breakthroughs that have allowed us be less the
victims of nature than societies in the past, but we do not control the
world.
[The idea that we do], ironically, reveals [the central belief of a
technocratic worldview],
one every bit /as much an article of faith /as any /held by those who pray.
* breakthrough meaning: 1. an important discovery or event that helps to improve a situation or provide an answer to a problem. 2. a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development.
*Technocratic - of, relating to, or suggestive of a technocrat or a technocracy.
* Technocracy - government by technicians; management of society by technical experts.
전문가들 역시도 자신들의 기술로 문제를 해결할 수 있다는 "믿음"을 전제한 것이라는 측면에서
비과학적인 faith base 믿음에 기초한 세계관을 가진것인데
종교인의 믿음은 비과학적이라 조롱한다는 것은 어불성설이다
This faith lies in something quite unprovable and tentative, namely, that all human problems and challenges, whether climate change or gun violence or the coronavirus, are problems that can be solved if only we apply the right techniques, which these days are almost always political steps: i.e., passing the right laws or public policies.
* 좋은 정책법을 만든다 쳐도 그 법을 지켜 준다는 보장이 없으니 문제인건
법을 깨는 사람들의 마음을 통제할 방법이 법에는 없기 때문이라
경찰력을 동원하는데 가가호호에 배치할 수도 없고 경찰 자체가 법을 깰 수도 있기에
법만 가지고 문제를 해결할 수가 없는것이 현실이다
In this worldview, the world
and all of its complexities are reduced to mathematical models and can
thus be controlled by our best ideas and efforts. All of our problems,
the logic continues, can be, if not eliminated, at least ameliorated.
In fact, this worldview’s central article of faith explains why those /committed to it think of prayer and science /as mutually exclusive options, something //that directly contradicts the history of both science and many of history’s most important scientists.
[This secular faith], along with the political illusions () it fosters, is on full display right now by those /claiming this outbreak is something President Trump or some government entity should be able to save us from. Such an inflated idea of government not only reduces the room for God in our cultural imagination, it dramatically expands the room for the state in our cultural imagination. That’s something we’ll surely regret.
세상 사람들은 '정부'가 자신들의 행복과 안녕과 질서를 보장해 주리라는 철저한 "믿음"으로 사는데
정부란건 여러 인간들이 모인 선출된 단체로 임기 끝나면 안개처럼 사라질 단체요
서로 의견이 맞지 않으면 반목하다 와해될 공중누각인거 선거때만 되면 증명되는데
그런 정부에 자신들의 목숨을 거는 "믿음도박"을 하는것은 진정성실성한 "정치신자" 행태이다
In the end, placing the world
on our own shoulders in this way will not grant us any more control.
Instead, we’ll only find its weight too heavy, and then where will we turn?
As the psalmist said,
nations
may rage and people may plot in vain, but only the Lord “makes us dwell
in safety.”
Thank God when our leaders recognize this, and may we all join in praying for the Coronavirus Task Force, and for those political leaders and health officials around the world, for God-ordained wisdom to fight this potential pandemic.
* join in meaning: to become involved in an activity with other people:
정부만 믿고 사는 정부광신자 중의 누군가는 정부의 도움을 받지 못해
코로나균의 희생물이 이미 되었고 또 될 수 있지만
정부 관계자 아무도 책임을 질 수 없는건
그들도 한 인간이고 자신이 속한 정부를 믿는 한 신도信徒이기 때문이다
물론 정부도 할 만큼 최선을 다 하고 있으나
정부가 할 수 있는 limitation 한계가 있기 때문에
전지전능하신 하나님께 도와 주시라 기도하는 것이 무에그리 혐오스러워서
그리도 사특한 말로 조롱을 한단 말인가???
감히 하나님께 기도한 사람중에는 악질중의 최악질 므낫세 왕도 있는데
그런 사람의 기도를 들어 주신 하나님께서
그와는 다르지만
역시나 위기를 맞은 다른 사람의 기도를 들어 주시지 않을리가 없다는 증명이 된다
* 2 Chronicles 33:12 Contemporary English Version (CEV)
While Manasseh was held captive there, he asked the Lord God to forgive him and to help him.