"O god of our many understandings..."

Here is Eugene Robinson's prayer from yesterday's inaugural festivities. Given HBO's programming history, it's rather interesting that the channel chose not to include the prayer in yesterday's broadcast. Is HBO afraid of a gay planet?

But let's go back to the prayer itself. Timmy Brister has something to say:

Notice that, in the four minute prayer, nothing is said of the nature of this god, and nothing is asked in reference of him doing what only a god could do. The prayer is fundamentally ethical, not theological. It reflects not a desire to know the one true God and conform our lives to His will, but a prayer for God to understand us and conform his will to our ways. The requests for deliverance is not against sin, Satan, and self but rather social evils. While it may be true that billions exist with less than a dollar a day, every human exists without forgiveness of sin apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ. But that’s not the point. Mr. Robinson is “horrified” by the Christian prayers of the past and seeks to buck the trend by advocating “religious tolerance” for everyone who has a god of their own understanding. Having said that, anyone who prays to a God who has defined Himself, who is eternally self-existent, eternal, and self-sufficient, well, that will not be tolerated. Your prayers should be renounced and your God must not be addressed. We don’t need to know and understand the God who has spoken and whose words shape reality; we need to self-actualize and shape our own realities with greater moral fortitude and faith in the supposed inherent goodness of man. We are all victims, and so is the god of our
many understandings.