Why We Pray

What are our thoughts but silent prayers? What are our good works but pleas for blessings and forgivenness? What are our labors but prayers for success and prosperity? What are good habits but a petition for good health?

I am reading a book by Donald Spoto, In Silence: Why We Pray. I find much of it helpful and affirming. One of the things Spoto attacks (though attack is a strong word for a writer so obviously broad and tolerant in his approach) is prayer as magic. Magic involves bargaining and manipulation. We are probably all tempted to do this at times as we approach God and bring our concerns to Him. We want an often-miraculous solution to a problem. In fact, this is such a common misunderstanding of prayer that it is used by people like Dawkins as evidence that God does not exist — or doesn't matter. Dawkins claims, if I remember correctly, that people who are in touch with God should be able to consistently win the lottery — either by praying that their numbers would come up or that God, who sees the future, would tell them what the numbers will be for the next draw.

We'll put aside for the moment the utter ridiculousness of this argument for anyone who actually knows anything about Christianity. It is essentially the same as asking why all Christians can't fly or walk on water. The materialist mistakes prayer and communion with God for magic. The devil, whom I have reason to suspect is quite real and a person in the broad sense of the word, may work magically on a very limited scale to lure in some of his adherents. God does not.

Spoto does a good job of clarifying the purpose and intent of genuine prayer, and he illustrates the difference between the legitimate Christian prayer of petition and magic as he goes line by line through Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer. He also discusses the will of God in relation to the will of man — his point being that God does not have a will in the same constrained sense man does. We can speak of God's will only by analogy to our own — a valid understanding I think. After all, God, as Spoto points out earlier, differs from us in that He is not a "Being among beings" — He is not an Individual among individuals. He is a Person in relation to us, as possessing some of the attributes of a human personality. Though it is probably better to say that we are like God in possessing some of His personality attributes in our small way, since we are made in His image rather than the reverse.

While I generally agree with Spoto's analysis and reflections, I struggled with some of his language:

It is always tempting to regard prayer as the solution to a problem — or, worse, to all problems. But prayer is not a means of escape from the ordinary lot of physical and emotional life, which necessarily involves experiences of diminishment, darkness and dying. In fact, prayer is rarely the solution to any problem at all.

The issue here is the use of the words "problem" and "solution". Spoto is using them in a sort of technical sense, but he does not bother to tell us that up front. We have figure it out from the context. See how he concludes that paragraph:

We do not pray for utilitarian or functional or financial reasons, nor because prayer can produce beneficial results. We pray to know more deeply Whose we are; from that awareness derives everything we genuinely need in life.

So, contrary to what the author seems to be saying about prayer not solving problems, he proclaims prayer as the solution to all problems. Prayer does without question produce "beneficial results" if it results in us knowing "more deeply Whose we are". What it does not necessarily result in are UPS deliveries of free red bikes on Christmas Eve. I think knowing why I am here and being in communion with the One who sent me here, is pretty "utilitarian" and "functional". I think we will have a lot fewer financial problems if we understand our purpose and destiny, which, as Spoto agrees, is revealed through prayer.

Paul's words to the Athenians are recorded in Acts, Chapter 17. In that passage, he says: ...so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring' (Acts 17:27-28). Spoto uses these words as a springboard to consider the intimate nature of prayer. It is not a long-distance communication with a distant, withdrawn Deity who must be appeased by sacrifice and approached with formality. (Formality and reverence are not equivalent.)

Prayer is much like breathing. We do it, Spoto believes, whether we realize it or not. When Paul urges the Thessalonians to "pray without ceasing", this is what he must have in mind. Our lives are prayers. Our thoughts are prayers. Our words and our works are prayers. We are doing all we do in Him for our being is given to us by Him and it continues only because of His presence. How could it be otherwise in light of the truth that God is so near to us, that our lives are inextricably bound up in His, that He, as the Ultimate Reality, is the Father of us and of our reality. If we reject that light, we have nothing but darkness: ... If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness. Apart from prayer, there is no life. There is only emptiness and bleak, meaningless existence — hell.