Kidney donation, prayer, and musings
My friend Chris just donated a kidney. This is a super awesome thing, and I hope he will blog about it when he feels better as I would love to hear about the experience from his perspective. But what I am going to talk about here is some of the things that I experienced as a result of his action.
First, for those of you who don't know I lost my mother to extremely botched post-operative care for a kidney transplant operation. This was over fifteen ago, but I admit that it still haunts me a bit. So when I heard that Chris was donating a kidney, I was somewhat alarmed. However, I soon learned that kidney transplant technology has made great leaps since my mother's operation. Rejection is far less common these days, the operation is a lot smoother and easier, and the success rate even without a family member donating is very high.
It is exciting for me to have a concrete example of how much we have learned, and how far we have advanced in medical science these last 15 years. Just imagine it - the thing that took my mother's life, a problem that is now largely past. Dedicated, smart men and women have, for the last couple of decades, put their all into improving on kidney transplant procedures. How many people contributed to this? Hundreds? Thousands? All learning a little bit here, a little bit there - improving the tools, improving the techniques, improving our understanding of how the body works. Amazing. Simply amazing. And that of course is only one of hundreds of improvements that have been made in the field of medicine during our lifetime.
As some of you may know, Chris Owens is a United Methodist pastor in Maryland. He and I have been discussing spirituality and theology for awhile now, mostly via Facebook. I consider him to be one of the great Christians that I know (not that I know a large number of them anymore). To make a long story short, a couple of times now when there has been trouble in his life, I have offered to pray for him. I make these offers because I know that for believers, knowing that someone is offering prayers on their behalf is comforting, and I have read some studies linking the knowledge that one is being prayed for with increased optimism (though there is some question about whether those studies are, in fact, accurate). You will have to wait for Chris to tell you how my prayers affected him, but I found it interesting how prayer affected me.
As an atheist, I am not convinced that there is anyone or anything out there to receive my prayers. I have yet to be persuaded by the evidence on the matter, and in fact have been un-persuaded by the evidence or lack thereof in the past. But still, I thought to myself "If it might help Chris feel better, what is the harm? It isn't meaningful to me, but it is meaningful to him - and if that is the case what does it matter whether is is meaningful to me? I'm offering prayers for him after all, not myself." Maybe that is just lame self justification for what I was doing (Richard Dawkins would likely castigate me for being untrue to my own beliefs, but Richard Dawkins can be a real dick sometimes).
And so I prayed.
At first I was very self-conscious about it. I think that most doubters and skeptics, if they pray at all, probably start out by putting in a preface - "O God, you know I don't believe in you, but..." or "If I am wrong and you can hear me God..." or some such. I did that too the first couple of times. But gradually I came to realize that this stuff was just making the act about me, not about the other person, so I now I am trying now to stop doing that. I try to keep it simple, the way most of us were taught to pray as kids - "Help Chris and his family, help the recipient Ann, give them whatever they need, amen." I haven't felt the presence of God through this activity - haven't felt any sort of response or anything like that. But I will admit it - it DOES feel good. It gives a sense of satisfaction that is alluring to feel that I am contributing, in some small way, to helping my friend and his family feel better. I remember once again why it is such a popular response by the religious to difficulty and trouble. Praying makes me feel like I am actually doing something, actually contributing to a situation that is, for all intents and purposes, completely outside of my mundane control. That feeling of empowerment is heady, almost seductive in its power. Here I am, sitting at my desk in Humboldt County and I, through my petition to a higher power, can actually HAVE AN EFFECT on something that is on the other side of the country, and over which I would really have no normal means of affecting even if I were on the East coast. That is a pretty darned awesome thought - like having a superpower.
But I also hedged my bet. I sent a "get well" gift (Chris will probably read this before it gets there, so I am not going to mention what it is). And that reminded me of the danger of prayer - the idea that praying is enough. How many times have we heard the saying "Just put it in God's hands," in our lives. I hate that phrase. I think it initially had some good justification, but these days it seems to be so often repeated that it sounds more like an excuse than an admonition. Why bother to do anything concrete when there is an all-powerful God to take care of it for you if you just ask? By his very nature, wouldn't any help that God decides to give be better than any mortal help? After all, God is God, and we're just poor fallible schmucks who can say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. But I really think that is the wrong way to go about things in this life.
The very LAST thing we should do is put things in God's hands. Really - it is the very last thing. The thing we should do after we have exhausted all other possibilities, when there is nothing more to be done in this earthly existence. When we have offered all the help there is to offer, all the comfort there is to give, all the effort that we can make... then, and only then can we put things in God's hands if we so choose. Why? Because even if there is a God, I think we all know pretty well by now that He/She/It/They are not in the habit of big, flashy, showy interventions. When folks need to be comforted or healed or rescued or protected we all know quite well that it is other humans who will comfort or heal or rescue or protect them, and if nobody is around to perform these services then it is likely that those in need will remain un-comforted, un-healed, un-rescued, and un-protected. Our daily lives are the gifts of many, many people - yes, people - who built the electrical grid, laid and maintain the roads, constructed and refined the automobile, developed writing, and grew the bananas that we get at the supermarket.
Too often I think the religious forget this. Honestly, too often I think that we all forget this, but I'm talking about prayer here. Looking over the comments on Facebook regarding Chris's surgery from his parishioners and friends, I saw over and over again the refrain of "praise God!" and "God is good!" But missing almost entirely from the threads was any sort of comment about the surgical team, the folks in post-operative care, the hospital staff, the scientists who developed and refined the procedure. Doesn't their work - which is tangible, observable, testable, and objectively verifiable - deserve some credit? Why do the religious save all their credit for their deity, and so often leave little or none for the very real and physical people who actually brought about the medical miracle of removing an organ from one person and putting it in another?
That is why I find the idea of prayer - particularly intercessory prayer - so uncomfortable. It isn't that the act is bad in itself, but it is the dangerously seductive mindset that seems to lurk around the act - this idea that it is God who will care for us, take care of our needs, and aid us in times of trouble, and that it is Him - first, foremost, and in far too many cases solely - that we should thank.
I want to say in closing that I am in awe of Chris, who has in this performed an act of great generosity and self-sacrifice that is too seldom seen in our society. It is truly an inspiring thing, and a beautiful one. If inspired, in part or in whole, by his religious faith it speaks well for such beliefs, and can and should act as a counter to the criticisms leveled against religious belief. In Chris there is, truly, a man who lives by the best of his faith. I am also extremely grateful to all of Chris's friends, neighbors, co-workers, and brothers and sisters in Christ, who have been so supportive of him in this time. Again, if their actions and support are motivated by their religious convictions, then they are all shining examples of the goodness that can be inspired by such beliefs, and the amazing acts of kindness that it can inspire.
As for my curmudgeonly comments about prayer, I hope that in this case they will be accepted by the theist and atheist alike in a constructive manner. It is not my wish to convince those who find or offer comfort in prayer to stop praying, but only to ask that we all remember that whatever miracles the Bible may impart to the will of God, it was a person who lifted the kidney out of Chris, a person who placed it within the body of Ann, and a great, vast host of humanity - from brilliant medical scientists all the way down to the cantina workers who made their lunches - who provided the effort which made this miracle possible.