IndiaSphere

In a moving piece titled “Atheist’s prayer” by Jug Suraiya, I was especially struck by this bit:
Prayer is often seen as a form of theft, a guilty misappropriation of another’s hope. But far from being an act of stealing, a zero sum game in which one must lose for another to gain, prayer, true prayer, binds us together in our common mortality… If prayer is at all a theft, it is an embezzlement from God of our human responsibility for each other, a solidarity unmediated by any power, earthly or heavenly.
One can anticipate a certain kind of mind wilfully misinterpreting parts of Suraiya’s column (see the full piece) to mean that an atheist has been so shaken by recent events that he has had to turn to God; to prayer as it is conventionally defined. But despite the restraint exercised in the piece, his real meaning ... [Follow Original Article link for full content.]