Many Christians follow a double standard when it comes to how they think their prayers should be viewed vs. how they think others’s prayers should be viewed. Christian prayer? We should all respect it. But you can laugh your head off at the prayers of other religions — or in some cases even threaten them with guns, as a bunch of assholes about twenty miles up the road from me, in Irving, TX, did recently. That’s all kosher, for many Christians. The moment you dare to criticize Christian prayer’s efficacy, however, many of them are up in arms.

I wonder if that (at least partly) has to do with the Bible.

For example — have you heard that story about the Man of God who commanded the slaughter of people who were fervently praying? Hardly the stuff of child-rearing.

And yet, I heard it as a child because it was in I Kings, which was fascinating. I Kings has wars, murders, kings, queens, intrigue, secrecy, scandals…within the seeming tameness of my straight-laced conservative Christian upbringing, I found the unrelenting R-rating-worthy, cruelty-filled excitement that was I Kings almost as engaging as the softcore porn of Song of Solomon.

The star of this story about praying is the prophet Elijah. He’s really a badass. For example: Only three people in the Bible were such great people that God supposedly took them up into heaven while they were alive: Jesus, Enoch (some random guy in the Old Testament who for some reason didn’t die because “God took him away”), and Elijah. Of these three, Elijah has the most interesting exit — a goddamn chariot of fire, with horses of fire, came down out of the sky and picked Elijah up in the middle of a whirlwind, while his successor Elisha just watched him ride away (in a move that would put the prophet Muhammed to shame)…

No other Man of God in the Bible — not even Jesus, who just kinda boringly floated up into heaven — had that kind of exit. He was so awesome, in fact, that the Gospel of Matthew claims that people supposedly thought that Jesus was Elijah reincarnated. And then, when Jesus supposedly met people from the past in the Gospels, the two people he met with were Moses and Elijah.

Long story short, Elijah was a Big Deal in the Bible, and as a young kid looking for a role model in the Bible, a kid whose middle name was “Elisha” (the guy Elijah passed the torch of being a prophet to after taking his chariot of fire into heaven), Elijah was my role model. He wasn’t just a side character in the book of I Kings; he was the main course of it.

Elijah, Man of God extraordinaire.

So…anyway, the chapter in which Elijah — a role model “Man of God” for me and adventure-seeking, god-fearing children everywhere — has 450 people slaughtered for praying is I Kings 18.

At the beginning of this chapter, God tells Elijah to go see the king of Israel, Ahab. Ahab’s wife is Jezebel, and Jezebel is really into this god named Baal. Over the past three years or so, the prophets of Baal have gained a large market share in religious worship within Israel, so Israelites tend to waver between Baal and the Old Testament God (Yahweh).

Elijah wants to settle this wavering once and for all so that people follow Yahweh, so when he catches up to King Ahab he convinces him to get the country together for a showdown between himself and 450 prophets of Baal. Ahab agrees, the date is set, and the games begin.

The setup: Each side has their own altar — the Baal guys made their own, and Elijah repaired a broken-down Yahweh altar for his own. Each side also chooses a bull to sacrifice. They each cut up their respective bull and prepare it however their religious tradition was supposed to do it, and then pray to their respective gods. And the god that answered…that was the real god (the sacrifice to the other god. presumably, would just be a bunch of bull — sorry, I had to).

(By the way…we’ve done similar experiments recently, with much better setups, and they don’t always come out in the Christians’ favor — in fact, the most comprehensive experiment regarding prayer showed that saying “I’ll pray for you” can actually make things worse.)

The prophets of Baal go first.

They pray with heartbreaking fervency — anxiously, from morning, till the noon, exhausting themselves with passionate dancing. And Elijah looked on respectfully, patiently waiting his turn.

Just kidding.

At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”

Can you imagine if an atheist taunted prayer like that? Christians would be infuriated. It’s perfectly fine for Elijah, the great Man of God and role model prophet of the Old Testament, to set an example by insulting someone from another faith, in spite of the fervency of their prayers. The double standard Elijah uses is the same one that insulates Christianity from criticism while granting it the hypocritical license to criticize every other religion.

Then the story gets more disturbing, because the prophets of Baal’s prayers grow even more anxious and sincere in response to the taunts of great Man of God Elijah:

So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice.

Wow. That is seriously sincere prayer — shouting louder and louder till they lose their voices, crying out to their god, slashing themselves to get the god’s attention until their blood was flowing, frantically continuing the fervency until that evening. Even though I know the story is fiction, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. They may be wrong — but is it really nice to make fun of people while they are praying so fervently? I may disagree, but maybe just…a little compassion? They’re slashing themselves with swords and spears in frantic anxiousness for god, screaming desperately at the top of their lungs…maybe just a little empathy?

Predictably, Baal doesn’t set the altar on fire. So the next verses say that this does not prove Baal doesn’t exist, just like most Christians say “unanswered” prayers don’t prove God doesn’t exist. Maybe Baal (like the Christian God a lot of the time) just said no, or doesn’t like to be tested. There are a lot of ways to explain it, as conversations with Christians make clear using arguments such as this one from Christianity Today:

Sometimes it does seem like our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. But what we feel isn’t always the same as what’s really true. The Bible teaches us that God does answer our prayers (John 16:24). But there are a few things we have to remember: God’s answer may not always be what we were hoping for. His answer sometimes is simply “no.” And his answer might be something we’ll never completely understand. In any case, his answer is always the best answer. He loves us dearly, and his answers to our prayers are always what we need … even if they’re not necessarily what we want.

So, of course, the scripture extends the same courtesy and reasoning to the Baal followers.

Naw, just kidding. When it comes to someone else’s god, suddenly the logic comes in and followers of the Bible can see that silence means that the lack of a response means that the god doesn’t exist – as the writer of I Kings did when they wrote:

But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Ugh. What a double standard. If I were to use that logic on a Christian, there’d be all kinds of, “Wait — maybe the answer was no” or “maybe we just have to wait” or “you can’t test god like that.” But here it’s OK to simply say no one’s paying attention.

Then Elijah does his little magic show, dumping water all over his altar before doing a grandiose prayer. And of course, God sends fire down on Elijah’s altar in such fantastic fashion that everyone in the onlooking crowd start shouting out that Yahweh is the one true God.

And then Elijah and the crowd tend to the wounds of the prophets of Baal as anyone with half a heart would do. Elijah’s a good sport — realizing he beat the prophets of Baal sorely, he shakes their hands with a polite smile for their effort, and apologizes for making fun of them.

Just kidding.

He has the crowd slaughter them to death.

Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.

Now, I think that prayer should be criticized, but I hope we can all agree that this slaughter is, to put it mildly, a bit too rude.

All of us atheists, of course. Christians have a dilemma.

What would you do, Christian? Would you have seized those prophets and slaughtered them for failing in their prayer? Don’t stall. Don’t weasel around it. What’s your answer?

If it’s “no,” you might understand us atheists’ objections to the Bible more than you think.

And if it’s “yes”…I’m worried about your children. That doesn’t seem like a good answer to teach them.

Thank you for reading.

[Image via izarbeltza under CCL 2.0]