my problem with prayer
it’s likely not surprising to anyone that my questions - and, ok, cynicism - in regards to religion extends to prayer. i’m not happy that this cynicism is part of my life, but i feel these are things i have to own, so I can work through them. for what it’s worth, i’m MUCH more upset with the idea of westernized, organized religion as i know it, than I am with the simple act of faith. and - for what it’s worth - i actually tone down the bitter on this blog. hard to believe, i know 
i have had a problem with prayer for a long time and it has a little something to do with what i call the “god genie.” we pray to god to cure someone’s illness, to give us safe travels, to help us get good grades, to grant us the money to make rent (ok, so i actually have prayed that last one …). when it happens we get all fired up about what god can do. if it DOESN’T work out the way we want, chances are we never really mention it again. my problem with this ever-present scenario is two-fold:
1. what if the illness was cured/travels were safe/grades were good/rent money materialized - because that’s just the way the world works? i can be thankful to god for making an orderly, sensible universe, but beyond that i just don’t know.
2. if the illness isn’t cured/travels aren’t safe - etc., etc. few people in these types of scenarios (at least in my experience) really get that angry at god. they’re willing to attribute THESE things to the universe. but it seems to me like you can’t have it both ways. either we subscribe to the laws of the universe - or we get excited when god “answers a prayer” and get angry when he doesn’t.
because of these aforementioned problems and, at least in my mind, no apparent solutions, i’d been content to look at prayer as a spiritual discipline. i think it’s clear it’s something we should do, but i’m not willing to make claims on its outcome. then ryan pointed out a passage to me from james:
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well?? what is this madness?! 
obviously not a blanket promise to us, but was it a blanket promise to the recipients of james’ letter? and if so what does that mean?
same goes for the elijah situation - did he ACTUALLY make it rain? (this one’s a little different because it’s from the old testament … but yet referenced in the new testament.) do these instances mean that we can change god’s mind? does it mean that there are certain things god’s kind of ambivalent about and if we pray he’ll answer in the way we want? what if someone else prays for a different outcome - how does he decide? and what types of things might he be ambivalent about? does he KNOW we’re going to pray for something and therefore, we’re really just playing into what he had planned already? (that one sounds far too much like predestination and makes me very uncomfortable.) but ALL of these scenarios make me uncomfortable as they take views of god that i simply do not believe to be true.
so, i’m left with my favorite question to ask myself - do i just not have enough faith? in my pursuit of knowledge have i railroaded over the thing that was supposed to keep my hope in all these supernatural principalities alive? but here again i come to a thing i do not believe to be true - for if faith can be shattered by expansive knowledge, what kind of a faith is it anyway? i believe that an intellectual pursuit of god is crucial to our spirituality so therefore i am forced to conclude that this system was designed to stand up to such questions and tests.
and then i come to the idea that perhaps the root of my skepticism lies not in prayer itself but how i’ve been TAUGHT prayer and what i’ve been taught ABOUT it, growing up with everything filtered through a certain type of lens. and this explanation seems most likely …
as is the case with most of my posts … more questions than answers. perhaps my monastic retreat this weekend will help straighten out some of this internal cacophony.
August 12 2009 07:12 am | religion
August 13th, 2009 at 5:25 am
I loved this post simply because of its title. And (now that I’ve read it) also because of your questions.
I have exactly the same questions about prayer as you - like, how retarded is it for me to be like, “Dear God, my ____ is ____. Please fix this asap. Thanks!” is going to make God go, “Hold up, everyone! *CATIE* just prayed a prayer! I wasn’t going to do anything on this one, but now that she asked…”
I’ve also been conflicted based on what I’ve been taught about prayer (my lens, to borrow your term)in church. I’ve always been taught that I should pray for God’s “will,” whatever that means. So, I would always pray something like, “Ok God, please make so-and-so like me. But only if its your will. Because if its not your will, I don’t want him to like me. But if it *is* your will, then I’d really like it if you would make him.” ……which is very convoluted. I would end up for asking for what I want, then changing my mind bc of the sneaking suspicion that God might not want that for me, then pretending to myself I only wanted for my life what HE wanted for my life.
Translation: I have to live with what *actually* happens in my life every day. Those prayers were nothing more than a messy “Please let things happen to me that will happen.” There was never any way for me to *know* if God made these things happened, or acted as a guardian angel and prevented things from happening, etc.
For awhile, I gave up prayer as a lost cause, until I realized something cool about it (and yes, there IS something cool!) that doesn’t really even have to do with God.
Prayer, especially prayer for other people, is a way to get yourself out of your “world” and interact; to love. Focusing on your neighbor down the street’s pain at a sick child takes the focus off yourself for 2 minutes, which (in the long run) probably does more good than we give it credit for. If you’re willing to think about other people’s problems, how long until you’re willing to try to do something to help them? And regardless of what your religious affiliation, most seem to agree that helping people is a good thing.
So, obviously I have no answers, either
But the dialogue is where the fun is at!
August 13th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
this post spawned quite a long thread when i posted it to FB and several people had some good points. my friend kevin, who just got his M.Div, made a compelling case for the idea that god CAN change his mind and that’s where prayer comes into play. it’s not that he changes WHO he is, but more like changes WHAT he “believes” about a certain scenario based on the outcome of reality. he explained it much better than i am - you should check out what he said
(on that note, i wish there was a way to sync FB comments with blog comments …)
one thing i realized from that thread was that everyone who commented agreed with me. interesting, because when i have these thoughts and post these things, sometimes i feel like i’m the only one out there (or one of a few). i wonder why - if we’re all thinking the same thing - we don’t just come out and say it! i have my speculations, but i’ll leave it at that
i know for my part i’m done censoring myself in the public space when it comes to my doubts and skepticism.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Ok, i think i’ve got you on this one. Let me see if i’ve got your drift here. You think there is kinda a double standard. If something good happens, we praise God, but if something bad happens, or something good doesn’t happen, we don’t get mad at God. you think that either we should be happy with God when things go well and mad when things suck, or be indifferent either way. Am i right? Let me give you some food for thought. James chapter 1 verses 16 through 18.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
What i took from what you said was that maybe when things go good it’s just kinda chance or luck. Wrong. This verse right here disproves that idea. Every good and perfect thing comes from God. So when life goes good for anyone, whether they’re a Christian or not, it’s because of God. You can’t disprove that. When things suck, is it God making things go wrong? In the book of Job when his life went to heck in a hand-basket, God did not cause it. He allowed it to happen, but He did not cause it. And after satan had had his fun, God blessed Job by replacing everything that he had lost. Since the day i met her my girlfriend has said “there’s no such thing as luck” when i reference luck at all. These verses are the basis for that. I personally believe that when life is going great, God is responsible for everything that is good. When life sucks, i think that most of the time it’s satan and his minions trying to sabotage what God is doing. But occasionally it may be God’s punishment for something.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
i’m not saying we should necessarily be indifferent - i think i summed it up with my point here:
“it seems to me like you can’t have it both ways. either we subscribe to the laws of the universe - or we get excited when god “answers a prayer” and get angry when he doesn’t.”
i take a much more diestic view of things. you’re right - i don’t think things going one way or another is good luck or bad luck because yes, ultimately god is in control. but i also don’t think he is there controlling every little thing. he ordered the laws of the universe so that we are able to use our free will to make the choices we want to make. a lot about the way things work out is left up to our free will and the laws of nature.
this is the way i tend to feel about good things AND about bad things. i can praise god because he set the systems in place and desires the best for us but as for the specifics, we let natural law run its course.
but this likely has a lot to do with the fact that i identify with arminianism, whereas it sounds like you are more on the calvanism side. what we believe about choice and free will influences the way we see a lot of faith issues.