Thursday, September 2, 2010
House of the Holy
"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him." (1 John 5:14-15)
From what I understand, a prayer is a personal praise or request, intended for an omnipotent being or other consciousness. Is it safe to make this broad assertion for the sake of this conversation, or is it necessary to breakdown the individual techniques, styles, and versions of the prayer concept? I mean, there are people that state prayer to be an internally aimed directive, or a socially-bonding inspiration (see: Jonathan Edwards). Whatever the case, I am going to understand it as a communication to a being or consciousness other than oneself, intended for the sake of personal therapy or miracle.
So, what makes a “successful” prayer? When players are holding hands, praying for a field goal that pushes wide-right, is success measured by a miss (see: Scott Norwood)? When someone prays for the well-being of a loved one with cancer, is success the annihilation of the ailment, or is it the process of a relatively quick and painless passing? At Easter dinner, when the family gives thanks for the food before them, no matter how bountiful, is the fact that there is an acknowledgement of appreciation a success?
Can prayer be measured by its success, or is it on a plain beyond measurement?
If the field goal goes right, did the Giants “out-pray” the Bills that day? If the loved one passes peacefully, did the family pray for his death and acceptance to Heaven? Or, did the family just pray for goodness to surround him while in this time of need, and the success is understood to be either remission of cancer, or the painless death?
When an Easter meal sits before you, is success that it is cooked to perfection? Or, are you praying that God acknowledges your acknowledgement and checks you off a list of do-gooders?
What does prayer DO?
Religious zealots will spin prayer into an ambiguously focused (yep, try to define that phrase) means of acting on faith. It will not be tangible; it will not be rigid. It will be what you make it. To suggest that it should be measured will be insensitive and overly analytical.
But, what it will have for this crowd is value beyond your comprehension. The concept of faith is based upon this premise. When you pray, you are doing God’s will, and when you do God’s will, you embody Christ and therefore are on the path towards atonement for man’s sins.
So, why do the players pray? Why do people pray for a loved one? Why do we say a prayer of thanks for the food before us? Is it ultimately for atonement, or is it out of a sincere desire to alter reality?
Herein is my beef.
Prayer is a real-time event and/or concept, and by conducting as such, you are making a real-time request that enters an unreal-time dimension. To clarify, you pray for Grandpa that his cancer goes into remission. It is as if you are sending a letter to a house of prayer in order to have it stamped, approved, and enacted. You use your thought or words to communicate with a manifestation beyond your comprehension. Your words surpass reality and enter eternity.
Or, if prayer is not intended this way, you must be simply praying for your own atonement given that prayer is not measured, but is simply a Christian act. That does not seem very Christ-like to me. Prayer seems innately unselfish, does it not?
If praying does not manifest itself as an effect as well as a cause, it is not successful. Those that dispute that, tell my why you pray. Tell me the intention of prayer…what does it DO?
One glaring reason as to why prayer is important to the pious is because it brings about community fervor. Communicating with God draws excitement! If the entire community convenes at church in order to gather strength and demonstrate the broad basis of faith, how can you be left out? It’s boring to pray at your bedside when you compare that to the raucous church celebrations that we know.
So, the claim here is that prayer has a value in the community, which I can certainly understand.
But, this speaks nothing of its truth-value. Prayer is a basic tenant in the Biblical teaching of Christianity, but it does so as the result of human log. The New Testament is composed of logs that were written years after Jesus’ existence, for the sake of spiritual education. If you are caught facing the corner of a room, mumbling to yourself, your easy exit is that you are praying. If you were to say that you were just speaking to yourself for therapeutic reasons, you could be regarded as mildly schizophrenic.
Further, if we cannot measure the success of a pray, how do we know if our “letter” reached its intended recipient? Does God speak back? If we get a warm-and-fuzzy, is that God’s response?
Think about that.
We have given prayer a free pass towards sanity for too long. We do not need to pray to be thankful for a meal. The cancer in Grandpa’s body is going to succeed or fail depending upon bodily and medicinal factors. Scott Norwood missed the field goal(s) because he pushed the ball right upon the snap.
Even in writing this, I can feel walls of dispute erecting themselves: “It is beyond our know-how,” or, “What makes you an expert on the Bible?” Questions like this are counterproductive. They breed mysticism, and allow a different set of rules for the religious platform. Do you not think that religion has already taken advantage of its “all-powerful” reputation by making up rules and rituals that cannot be justified? Do you really think that a God or supreme-being needs you to pray in order to save your Grandpa, as if it is in a cloud with arms-crossed, waiting in gloat? And, quite possibly the most important question: Do you really think we should be making decisions that affect our real-time surroundings, based upon a means of communication likened to a mental disorder?
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