Christian Life 8 - On Prayer, Part Two

 So I decided to work on my prayer life.  I had several issues with the concept of prayer at the time.

(1) Public prayer never seemed to have much to do with communing with God, nor did it seem intended to do so.  Public prayer seemed to be written and recited to be as poetic as possible, appealing more to the human listeners than to any divine ones.  This wasn't actually too big of a problem for me.  Trained as I was in public speaking, I was perfectly aware that poetry can move an audience in ways that rhetoric cannot.  For example, I would place the poetry of Lincoln's Gettysburg address against anything from the pen of Shakespeare, and its no accident that we still memorize Lincoln's three minute speech, but don't remember anything of the three hour oration by Edward Everett that followed it.  Still, it seems to me that prayer should not really be used as showmanship, no matter how talented the orator.

(2) While we usually give a cursory nod to adoration, praise and forgiveness, the bulk of our prayers seem to be focused on asking God to give us what we want and begging God's mercy on others.  As for the asking portion - which we usually justify with trite phrases like "you have not because you ask not" - I always remember Jesus' statements about the birds and the lilies of the field; that God already knows what we need and will happily provide, no asking necessary.  Of course, I don't actually hear too many people asking for what they need, but rather what they want.

(3) As for pleading God's intercession, this also appears to me to be rather presumptuous.  It seems as if we believe that, through prayer, we can change God's mind about something.  For God to even be God, God must exist outside the space-time continuum.  In my Baptist upbringing, this was always dealt with by reciting the "omnis" - omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.  If that be so, God doesn't change God's mind.  That is to say that, to change one's mind is to hold a given opinion at one point in time and, at a later point in time, hold a different opinion.  Take time out of the equation and changing one's mind becomes an impossibility.

(4) Finally, there is the matter of faith.  I believe in God.  I believe God has only good will toward us all.  So, if I pray for something and it doesn't happen, is it because I didn't have enough faith?  Is communion with God only for those few with sufficient faith?  How does one develop such faith?  Is it granted by God?  If so, why does God withhold such faith from the multitudes who pray fervently to receive it?  Does God have favorites?  It reminds me of the charlatan faith healers that, upon failing to heal someone of his/her affliction, blame the failure on the person's lack of faith.  In other words, this whole cycle of thought makes God into a charlatan or, worse yet, an asshole.  I refuse to believe God is an asshole.

I looked through my grandmother's books and found four on the subject of prayer.  I read them all.  I asked my pastor for three more.  I read those as well.  I found some interesting ideas in all of them, but I found nothing to satisfy the questions above. I was beginning to think I couldn't release my angst through prayer.  Adding to this is another experience that I've never typed up in my life.

Several years ago, I had what has been called a near death experience.  I had behaved foolishly in summer camp and allowed myself to be overwhelmed by heat stroke.  My first reaction upon returning to this life was anger (I have since learned that this is common).  I was annoyed to have to come back.  Later reflection convinced me of two things in addition: that I hadn't been dreaming the experience and that it didn't seem to fit with any other person's description of their own NDE.  I believed the first because even the wildest dream has some sense of familiarity to it and this experience was completely beyond my own imagination to create.  On the second matter, I realized that the afterlife defies description.  Language simply doesn't include words adequate to the task.  I will spare the reader my own feeble attempts.  The one takeaway that I can put to words is absolute serenity.  I wanted to recreate that serenity in this life through my prayers.

About two months ago, I had a slow afternoon and decided to take down a book I hadn't read in 40 years: The Religions of Man by Huston Smith.  Dr. Smith was a Methodist minister and professor of philosophy at MIT and other schools.  He was born in China to Methodist missionaries.  His first language was Mandarin.

I flipped the book open almost randomly and found myself amidst Smith's thesis on Buddhism.  I quickly found myself intrigued.  I have had the honor to know several Buddhists over the course of my life, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the company of each.  So, it was with some relish that I read the efforts of a fellow Westerner who obviously had as much respect as (and far more knowledge than) me on this most prolific of Eastern religions.  Particularly, I was intrigued by Smith's descriptions of Buddhist meditation.  I began to see similarities to my own efforts in prayer, with one major distinction.  Prayer - at least as taught in the West - seems to be almost exclusively an exercise in one attempting to talk to God, whereas meditation can readily be thought of as an exercise in listening to God.

I've spent the last two months exploring this difference.  Tomorrow, time allowing, I will begin to describe my findings.  It has been an eye-opener, to say the least!

Pax