This and That

The headline is “Study: Prayer Has No Effect on Heart Surgery Recovery” — and underneath that should be “What Did They Miss?”

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

They actually tried to do a “serious” study on this? I’ve often wondered how people participate in sleep tests and sex tests and other such ought-to-be-private “enterprises.” I mean, how could you perform normally in any of that sort of stuff when you know you’re being studied, scrutinized, scored, and so forth?!

But studying prayer? Now that isn’t just silly or sick — it’s stupid.

How is anyone going to pray normally and sincerely as part of a test? How is anyone going to genuinely pray to God and communicate with Him knowing it’s all being studied, scrutinized, scored, and so forth?!

And how do they know what the effect of no prayer would have been on any given person? A control group certainly won’t reveal that!

And how did they keep away the prayers of people not participating in the pseudo-study?

Man, attempting to be wise, again makes a fool of himself.

Researchers emphasized that their work can’t address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another’s behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

Oh, so they do admit it’s all a crock.

And they admit this isn’t a study about genuine prayer to God. Rather it was a study about the psychological impact of suspecting that someone might be praying for you. It isn’t a study on the effectiveness of prayer at all!

They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them.

Can you help them solve that mystery?

Or perhaps you would rather answer a different question. How many of those prayers remain stuck in monastery ceilings or floating around loose in the air, unattended and unheard…and unanswered?

(So much more to say, but I’ll let it at that.)

Oh, here’s another news report on the story.

It seems so many politicians and pundits and reporters are purposefully misrepresenting what’s going on at the US-Mexico border.

They keep talking about the immigration issue.

(In case you didn’t miss it in that sentence, illegal does not appear between the and immigration.)

Personally, I’m all for immigration and all against crime.

When reporters, pundits, and (especially) politicians refuse to make a clear distinction between legal immigration and illegal entry, my level of trust in them overall goes down even further.

Not that I expect them to care, but that’s a different subject.

Now a note to the politicians yakking away in DC about this plan and that: If current laws aren’t being enforced (penalties against illegal entrants; penalties against those who employ them; etc.), what’s the use of writing up another set of laws?

Oh well.

As a parent, there is a question much closer to home and much more applicable to me.

How do I do in enforcing the “laws” I have in my home?

Ah me. Now there’s a tough one. I think I would rather harp on the illegal immigration issue. 🙂

Thank God her life was spared! (I wonder what she plans to do with it.)

If you want to read more of the story than I have here, go ahead.

American journalist Jill Carroll was freed in Baghdad on Thursday, nearly three months after being kidnapped in the city.

“I’m just happy to be free. I just want to be with my family,” Carroll, wearing a headscarf, told Baghdad Television, adding she had had no warning she was being freed.

That’s very good news. (I also wonder what she plans to do with that headscarf.)

Another tidbit from the story:

[Islamic] Party leader Hashemi offered her a Koran at the end of her brief television interview and, speaking in English, said: “Don’t forget the Iraqi people.”

“Here’s the book being used to justify (and explain?) the kidnappings, murders, riots, and mayhem going on.” No, I’m sure he wouldn’t say that. But that “Don’t forget the Iraqi people” was very good. Don’t blame the people as a whole. (I’m sure she won’t forget the kidnappers either.)

Hashemi said Islamic principles had ensured her good treatment.

Come again?

One has been set free. But there are many others:

US-based Christian news source, Compass Direct, reports that more Christians have been arrested for their faith in Afghanistan in the wake of the release of Abdul Rahman. Compass, a news service that tracks persecution of Christians mostly in Islamic countries, says harassment of the Christian community has been stepped up.

Compass says two more Christian converts have been arrested in other parts of the country, but further information is being withheld in the “sensitive situation” caused by the international media furor over Rahman.

Reports of beatings and police raids on the homes of Christians are filtering out of the country through local Christian ministers.

The threat of death hangs over the heads of all Afghan Christians, of whom US-based groups say there may be as many as 10,000, meeting secretly in houses for prayer and bible study, and living in fear of their lives.

Oh my. Blogging about more than just one would become too time-consuming and wearisome.

So let me console myself with this call for ongoing prayer support for the persecuted church in Afghanistan.

Especially if the release of one means greater rage against the rest.

Although I’m disposed to think of this as bad news . . .

Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed victory on Wednesday in Israel’s election . . . .

Olmert, appealing in his speech to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Jews had aspired for thousands of years to create a homeland throughout the Land of Israel, biblical territory that includes the West Bank.

“But acknowledging reality and circumstances, we are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved Land of Israel … and evacuate, with great pain, Jews living there, to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfill your dream and live alongside us,” Olmert said.

. . . I also believe events are unfolding in accordance with God’s ultimate plan. In that plan, final good comes even from the bad.

As a relevant side note, I hardly see how Kadima will help solve this dilema:

Olmert’s unilateral approach appeals to many Israelis worn down by a five-year-old Palestinian uprising and concerned by the rise to power of Hamas in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip after the Islamist militant group won elections in January.

But maybe Kadima can pull off what I think Kadima can’t.

I expect Israel’s adversaries to take courage and new vigor from this election, and continuing wearing away at the Israeli psyche.

Oh . . . and while I was about to finalize this post, I came across this perspective.

PS: No, I have not read the book shown above.

From The Calgary Sun

most cases of Christians being killed for their faith receive no attention at all.

“There are more Christians being martyred today than at any other time in history,” said Glenn Penner, communications director of the Voice of the Martyrs.

Penner says the International Journal of Missionary Research estimates that from June 2005 until June 2006, about 171,000 Christians are expected to be murdered simply because of what they believe. That’s up from 168,000 murders of Christians in the previous year.

Most of those killings will take place in communist countries — North Korea, Vietnam and China, said Penner on Friday.

Christian martyrs are unlike Muslim martyrs. “Christians who have died for their faith have done so at the hands of other people, not as suicides, but in standing up for their faith, but in no way trying to hurt anybody else or seeking the death of those who were persecuting them.”

Emphasis mine.

This excellent piece puts into words some of what I’ve been thinking the last months:

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler — such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France — given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable.

Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping . . . .

In response, either the West will continue to stand up now to these reoccurring post-Sept. 11 threats, or it will see the bullies’ demands only increase as its own resistance weakens. Like the appeasement of the 1930s, opting for the easier choice will only guarantee a more costly one later on.

I believe the world is morally and socially weaker now than it was 60 years ago. By far.

Is it too late to ask God to show mercy?