By now Facebook is big enough that all your religious cousins are using it. They might even be using it more than you do because God told them their place is still in the home so they have lots of free time.

A strange side effect of this demographic shift from college kids to religious cousins is that Facebook has become the central point around which all prayer circles orbit. When somebody gets sick, the first thing people do is go to Facebook and request prayers from all their friends.

Who can blame them? As all biblical scholars agree, when you get sick, God just counts up the number of prayers in favor of saving you, those against, and all the abstentions. If you get enough "aye" votes, he fixes your cancer or UTI or whatever. If not, he lets you die and it's your friends' fault for not praying hard enough. Facebook hasn't changed this system, it's just made it easier to get enough signatures on your petition for life.

And it's working! People are living longer than ever before. In fact, human life spans are directly proportional to how many people you can reach with a public show of sickness. The printing press, telegraph, and telephone all helped out, but you can expect a huge jump in life expectancy now that God has to listen to Facebook users.

Strangely, God isn't doing as well on Facebook as he should be. Since communicating with him directly fixes diseases, you'd think he'd have more likes. Sadly, his official page is hovering around a measly 8 million. (He has other pages, but I love this one because it includes "Photos of my friends and God", though I don't see Him any of the pictures). Meanwhile, Lady Gaga has almost 59 million likes and yet she hasn't answered any of my prayers for her to do another show in her meat dress but with backup singers dressed as au jus and horseradish.

I know what you're thinking. Could I just ask people on Facebook to send encouraging words to me and grant money for cancer researchers? Wouldn't that be a more honest and productive way of using Facebook when somebody I know is sick? Sure, you COULD do that. But that won't accomplish anything. The American Cancer Society only has 800k likes, so you need to stick to the proven methods. Ask for prayers, and if that doesn't work, ask Lady Gaga to help.