Prayers that offend everyone equally

A simple solution to prayers at taxpayer-funded events might be ones that admit what we don't know. That should offend everyone equally.

This newspaper owns my words for 30 days, but after that feel free to use the following:

"God, we do not know if you exist or in what form, but we doubt that you would approve of the ways you've been described.

"We know that you are not vindictive enough to slaughter innocent women and children for the sins of men violating legalistic edicts attributed to you in ancient documents cobbled together over centuries from geographically dispersed authors with competing agendas.

"We are baffled by why you do not simply update us through emails, tweets or Facebook (but not MySpace) in our own languages.

"Since we cannot agree on how to define you, we believe that we can best honor you through good deeds and caring about our fellow travelers on this tiny speck of coalesced space debris too small for bickering over superficial differences.

"If you do exist, we know that you are too intelligent to want to be worshiped — or to put the fear of God into us for not bowing to others' dogma.

"We ask only that you deliver us from rednecks, racists and other zealots who believe that the ever-expanding fires of creation will be extinguished if infidels don't get worked up enough to set the world on fire over the unknowable.

"Amen or Awomen."

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]