You’re in college for f*ck sake. Have a beer and try to get laid for once. It will do you good.

I tend to think that although the prophets are clearly powerful theologians and interesting writers, their concept of God was somewhat primitive in certain regards. Their view of God’s interaction through geopolitical and natural events is no longer accepted by very many people today. If there is anyone who proposes that kind of worldview, the rest of society generally responds very critically.

I guess I also wonder if their concept of God was incomplete or inaccurate. At times, they may anthropomorphize the Almighty too much. You are right, though. These are difficult questions to answer.

The logic behind the Sacred Assembly appears to be that a communal religious activity will make a bigger impact upon God than an individual activity. To an extent, the people today who call for group prayer efforts are at least partly “biblical” in their thinking. There is a big warning to consider at this point, however. The Hebrew prophets also condemned some of the Solemn Assemblies because of the hypocrisies in the lives of the Israelites (Isaiah 1:13; Amos 5:21). So where does this leave us? Are our national days of prayer justified and desirable in the eyes of God, or should they be condemned as hypocritical wastes of time? This is not an easy question to answer. Only a Hebrew prophet would know for sure.

So you can pray for the nation, and then go out and party with your comrades!

I agree. Abandoning any organized effort is illogical. I just believe these organized efforts could be better managed and supplied outside of government and her lobbyists.

The hope that we can unite together to achieve our common purposes through combined resources is one thing. That hope is based upon our own years of experience doing it as well as the negative effects we have experienced with the opposite. It is also supported by even the most cursory analysis of the other industrial nations of the world.

The hope that somehow our society would function better if we broke apart and abandoned our organized common efforts at improving society is not only unproven, it is counter-factual and illogical. It still falls under the category of hope I suppose, but it is not a hope worth having.

The quote that S.C. put on our blog logo seems appropriate. In a similar way, humans can achieve great things when united together, but separate from organized systems, they fail to meet those expectations.