Jam, I do not mean any disrespect to you, especially since you prayed for your life while serving in Viet Nam. But what bothers me about prayer, and the reason I stopped doing it, is because I wonder why everyone's prayers aren't answered. For instance, why don''t all of the people fighting in wars survive? Another example is a good friend of mine who is a born again Christian. She's survived a little more than a year after being diagnosed with a cancer that kills 80% of the women her age who have it. Did God hate that 80%? She thinks Jesus spared her life.What makes her so special and the other 80% rotten enough to kill?
On November 22, 2010 my husband was dead for a full five minutes, (proven by data retrieved from his pacemaker). The only reason he didn't have brain damage was because the CPR we did kept enough blood circulated to his brain. He was revived by a defibulator, and thankfully, alive today. He saw no white light and wasn't greeted by his deceased parents, siblings, and friends. He remembered nothing of that terrible Monday morning or the weekend before it.
I didn't pray during that awful ordeal or during his two-week hospitalization and surgery to install a pacemaker and defibulator. Instead I spent the whole time, from beginning to end, begging him not to leave this earth and leave me behind. It never dawned on me to pray, yet I'm in the same situation as you. I call myself agnostic, because I don't have the balls to be atheist, and sometimes I'm not even sure of agnosticism.
I guess we just have to take life one moment at a time and learn from every experience.