Dear Lord Jesus Christ,
We thank You for allowing the settlers to obliterate the native inhabitants of this continent that we might more selfishly enjoy it -- especially the obscenely wealthy among us.
We thank You for the slave labor we brought over from Africa to build it up and ask that You ensure those black folks stick with the program now.
We pray that You will impose restrictions on any other immigrants coming to this land now, however -- if it be Your will. If not, we will take is as a sign or our great morality and bigheartedness, for which we thank You.
We thank You for the Crusades of the past and the Crusade upon us now and that we might smite our enemies like they did in the times of old.
We thank You for plausible deniability and selectively short memories that allow those in power to evade responsibility for crimes great and small -- from the full blown invasion of Iraq, obliteration of Syria and Libya to the smallest hospital we blow up in Afghanistan.
We thank You for our Saudi allies who we sell many weapons to that they -- when they are not beheading people for apostasy -- might share the blessings of our democracy with the more dimwitted among the Arab and Muslim peoples.
We pray for our nuclear armed Israeli allies that they might perpetually oppress the knife armed Palestinians, especially the Christians among them. And we pray that the Jews may all be converted to Christianity that You might return to earth so this whole farce of humanity is ended soon.
We thank you for our two party system, that keeps us simultaneously bickering and yet locked into the same course of morally repugnant policies for all eternity.
We thank you for the capacity to only see victims who are deemed appropriate to see, like those despicable frogs in Paris.
We thank you for our opposable thumbs and other enhancements to our being that ensure our capacity to eat -- as in this carcass before us -- and not so much to be eaten.
We thank You for sending Your son, Jesus, who is actually You Yourself, to selflessly die for our sins that we may be cleansed of our inequities and never again beat ourselves up for our dark deprivations, especially the really kinky, twisted ones.
Most of all, we thank You for our glorious media that we might better know Your will and what we should buy at all times, on cable -- and on the web.
In Jesus name we pray,
Amen.
[After I wrote this, I realized how similar it is to Mark Twain's "The War Prayer" -- which ends: "For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
[Via Wikipedia: "The piece was left unpublished by Mark Twain at his death in April 1910, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that the story would be considered sacrilegious. Twain's publisher and other friends also discouraged him from publishing it. ... According to one account, his illustrator Dan Beard asked him if he would publish it anyway, and Twain replied, "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."]