Pray for Petrol
Pray-in at S.F. gas station asks God to lower prices
The San Francisco Chronicle’s article is about Rocky Twyman, a man who’s “radical” solution to rising gas prices is prayer. No, I’m sorry. Putting your hands together and asking, “God, deliver us from these high gas prices” is the status-quo ‘round these parts.
A radical solution would be to stop driving a car and to change your life accordingly. A radical solution would be to siphon gasoline from your neighbor’s car. A radical solution would be to demand that your representatives act upon proposals for actions that would reduce oil costs, or that they support alternatives to our current national petroleum binge.
If the government is “in gridlock or ignoring” the problem, that’s no reason to stop pressing the issue. If anything, it’s more of a reason to advocate social change, not an excuse to waste your time on prayer.
This shit infuriates me, and it confuses me, but more than anything it reminds me of the climactic and inimitable final scene of There Will Be Blood.
(Spoiler alert of the first degree, but you’ve done yourself a god damned disservice if you haven’t seen the movie yet)
In the film, the reverend Eli Sunday has hit hard times financially, and comes to oil tycoon Daniel Plainview to sell off the Bandy tract, the one strip of land he has as yet been unwilling to sell. Plainview understands he has the upper hand, and twists the reverend Eli’s arm until he renounces his faith in a thoroughly satisfying reversal of an earlier scene.
It isn’t until after he has crushed the proselytizing spirit of Eli that Plainview informs him that the land no longer has any value.
It’s called drainage. I own everything around it… so I get everything underneath it. … I drink your water, Eli. I drink it up. Everyday. I drink the blood of lamb from Bandy’s tract.
Not only is praying for lower prices on gas logically and morally bankrupt, and absolutely ineffective, but it reveals an ignorance of the situation at hand. Why won’t gas cost as little as it used to? Because there’s less of it left to sell and more people who want to buy it. Where’s my bowling pin?