Praying for Rain: The Wrong Approach

I’d like to thank my state and local officials for making another lame attempt to solve the Georgia drought. The total inability for a coastal state to try and find sources for water is a little embarrassing (hint: how do you think all of those African deserts get water).

So what’s our latest plan … prayer? I think we’re taking the wrong approach.

So far we’ve tried …

• Yelling at Alabama & Florida
• Yelling at the Army Corps of Engineers, an organization famous for their inability to keep water on the correct side of barriers they construct
• Telling me I can’t water my plants
• Praying for rain
• Not letting UGA fans flush the toilets at football games (nope, not making that one up). Make your own outhouse jokes here.
• Yelling at the EPA and related federal agencies

Out of all of these wonderfully shortsighted forms of lip service , the prayer sessions bother me the most … and it’s not just that pesky constitutional clause about government endorsement of religion. Truth be told, I was tempted to show at the prayer service with several shamans and a truckload of live chicken. It might not have brought any rain, but I would have loved to see all of the Baptists look at Sonny Perdue and wonder if he was serious about inviting all faiths.

Politicians are not elected to be our spiritual leaders. That’s just part of the deal our founding fathers made after leaving countries who were up to their wigs in kings, queens, dukes, pashas and various leaders who all claimed to be endorsed by their particular version of what we in Georgia refer to as “Gawd” … complete with their own form of wrath for what they saw to be crimes against the state and/or holy writ.

Remember, they didn’t call her “Bloody Mary” because she liked a little vodka in her V8 …

When legislators gather to pray en masse for a prayer event, they’re doing two things:

1. Showing off their faith in an attempt to placate constituents who vote based on religious belief
2. Quietly admitting they don’t have a &^%$ing plan and hope “Gawd” will save them from low opinion poll results right before an election

Based on the minor amount of rain Georgia received after Sonny Perdue’s grandstanding, it would appear that “Gawd” is not on his side. I think we should use that to our advantage …

Yes, I said advantage … stick with me here …

Look through the Bible for references to heavy rain. See a theme? They aren’t rewards, quite often they are punishment. Great floods of the “Pat Robertson thinks you’re floating down the Mississippi on your roof because gay people hate the war” variety. Despite the many differences between faiths, they all seem to have a tendency towards wrath and punishment in the earlier chapters of their tomes.

That’s our advantage. Twisted politician logic would indicate that “Gawd” doesn’t love us that much since the rain didn’t show up within their current term, so we must already be on his bad side. Just kick the hornet’s nest a little more.

1. Find some state up stream of Georgia … Tennessee, Kentucky or those “Gawdless” folks in South Carolina (well, only if my family has a chance to evacuate … they’re cool).
2. Start breaking all of those sacred rules of behavior in the Old Testament, including but not limited to: golden idols, debauchery, gay marriage, selling beer on a Sunday, Janet Jackson halftime shows at football games and random acts of toga party.
3. Make sure you’re breaking these rules of holy writ upstream of Georgia.
4. Wait for the eventual flood.
5. Several weeks later, the water from these flooded states will flow into local rivers, streams and estuaries. This water will eventually flow into Georgia to fill our reservoirs.
6. Pat Robertson, for once, will look like a genius.

I admit the plan has some obvious downsides, including increased sales of those damn Left Behind novels … but it’s no stupider than a bunch of elected officials praying for rain instead of running a big pipe to the coast of their own state to pump water to a desalination plant so the state’s economy won’t suffer the effects of droughts that happen on a regular cycle in the state of Georgia.

Lord, please save me from your followers.