The Three Gates is Not Enough

Like “thoughts and prayers” rating the quality of the conversation instead of the need for action fails in every meaningful way.

Thaddeus Howze
6 min readMar 29, 2023
Midjourney Angel

“Prayer is an excuse to do nothing. Prayer is a symptom of mental illness and that’s all it will ever be.”

— Random Post Circulating the Internet

With all things, context matters — this post was likely made in response to the recent killing of six people, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, who were all 9 years old — and three adults — Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

As with all school shootings: the Congressional leaders of this nation offered their meaningless mantra of: “thoughts and prayers.”

Strangely enough, one of the more unusual comments this post has engendered as it sweeps the Internet, enraging the religions and non-religious alike is:

“This post does not pass the Three Gates.”

This is the one which set my teeth on edge. I am not a religious person (I have explained this in a number of posts already) but I recognize some people look at religion, not only as a supplication to…

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