Richard Dawkins must be turning on his soapbox.
There’s been a lot of praying going on—and a lot of people telling other people to pray—since Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the White Hart Lane pitch nine days ago.
Other players prayed on the pitch. Twitter was alive with prayer requests from celebrities such as Wayne Rooney. “Pray 4 Muamba” T-shirts sprung up everywhere. And all this before Muamba’s family had requested prayer.
And wonderfully, God seems graciously to have chosen to save this man’s life. Though his heart stopped for 78 minutes, he is now talking and moving—and was able to watch Bolton’s 2-1 win on Saturday (they may yet avoid relegation—see, miracles do happen!)
So what do we make of all this? Two things, perhaps:
1. Britain is still a religious country.
When the chips are down, people pray. And people preach prayers to others, too. Wayne Rooney may be a surprising preacher, but that’s what he was doing—telling others to act in a certain way to the Almighty. Despite the best efforts of active secularists and militant atheists, prayer is still our default action when confronted with the shocking reality of a broken world where 21-year-olds nearly die (and, sometimes, do die).
2. Britain is NOT a Christian country.
Let’s not kid ourselves. These were not prayers offered in faith to a Father who was being trusted to act for the good of His children and supremely for His own glory. Nowhere in the celebrity/sporting twittersphere did I spot a prayer which began “Lord, if it is your will” and ended “for the glory and in the name of your Son”. These prayers were offered to an unknown god, a genie in a bottle. A kindly deity who we can ignore every day except the day we need him, and who we can then whistle up, tell what we need, get it, and carry on as before. That’s not who God is. He would be no more or less God if He had decided that Muamba had come to the end of his life (as he will, one day—just as we all will).
And there are prayers which God won’t answer—prayers which come from a heart which has the wrong attitude, to which God says: “Even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them” (Hosea 11 v 7). God saving Muamba isn't the result of the prayers of people who treat the Creator of everything as though He were a God who can be taken off the shelf, dusted down, given His orders and then returned. It may be the result of the prayers of His children, who know who He is, who seek to treat Him as God, and who ask for His forgiveness through His Son when they fail to. And it certainly is because He is a gracious God, who gives us every breath we enjoy as a gift, whether we recognize that or not.
So the reaction to Muamba’s heart attack—and let’s give thanks to our Father that He has mercifully saved his mortal life—is at once heartening, and disheartening.
Britain still believes in something. But most of us have no idea who He is.
David Baker
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