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When I was a “born again” evangelical I used to struggle endlessly with the motivation to pray and also with the hope that my prayers might be answered. The variety of prayer requests to my “interventionist” God used to be limitless. As a child I used to pray for hours on end almost solely through fear of hell for myself and for others.

Now my view of what God is has changed dramatically. I do not believe in an interventionist God other than the fact that when we connect to this ground of being, we then have a responsibility to be the “body of Christ” on earth. In this case other than for medicational reasons I find myself prating less and less as I realise my past endevours were more for superstitious reasons.

Just interested as to what other approaches people have towards prayer.

Matt

Prayer is a difficult one. Like yourself, I was brought up within the evangelical fold and was told week in and week out from the pulpit that prayer was of utmost importance to the Christian. Again, like yourself, I fail to see the effects of intercessory prayer, and despite being told that God always answered prayer though sometimes the answer was “yes, no, not yet”, I fail to see any tangible effects. Of course there was always confirmation bias and often well-meaning and gracious people could ‘spin’ outcomes so that their view of God would never be disturbed. A typical example is fine when it comes to terminal illness. The sick person is prayed for, and the prayer as are all seeking a miraculous healing. When the sick person dies it is sometimes claimed that they died having attained a certain deep-seated peace. This sense of peace is chalked up as a demonstration of the power of prayer. Did they die with a sense of peace?! Surely that’s not the issue. The issue is that their prayers for healing were not answered, and prayers for peace which may have not been explicitly stated are claimed as a demonstration of the potency of intercessory prayer.

But where does that leave prayer? Jesus was often to be found praying, and prayer is certainly one of the disciplines of the Christian life. Maybe, as C S Lewis is reported to have said, “prayer does not change God, prayer changes us” (or something to that effect). Maybe our prayers should not be to brow beat an interventionist God, but rather maybe our prayers would be best served in helping us to align ourselves to the Holy so that we might be better agents of change in the world.

Like you, I’m not sure about prayer. But I feel I need to be praying.

Any helpful pointers to more progressive understandings of prayer would be greatly appreciated.

Simon

Simon,

thanj you for a wonderful post. I think you have hit the nail on the head with regards prayer but also our siritual life. It does not change God, it changes us. It is a good attitude to have throughout any practice we choose to adopt.

thanks,

Matt

I am adding my thanks to those of Matt - Simon, you have clearly stated what [in my experience] many now think of prayer. Prayer to me is often no more[!] than silence - just being aware of the life that is within and about me. Other times, when words are used, I understand prayer as an identification / empathy with those who suffer. Certainly I do not try to convince / change the mind of the non-existent ‘interventionist god’ of my old evangelical days. But whatever prayer may be, unless it results in action [mine and others] to change and to transform the world [and ourselves] for the better, then it is of little significance to me. Someone once told me that prayer is dangerous - but only if we become the answer to the prayer that we utter!

Very much with the previous contributors to this thread. I gave up talking to God when I realised I was simply talking to myself! Like you, John, my ‘prayer’ is now mainly silent awareness. I do use words when sharing prayer with others. Then the words I use are directed towards sharing awareness of the needs of others and of our world; they are certainly not about requesting a ‘God out there’ to do something, much more about asking what the ‘person in here’ could or should be doing!

Thanks for the post, it’s a great list. I’m definately going to have to try a few out. I’ve always found getting people to comment is the hardest part of posting, so hopefully this will help things along a bit. Whoop!

desmond ong

I’ve been through this question too, over many years.  For a long time after my evangelical born-again faith evaporated I totally ignored any thought of intercession for others. Then, after about thirty five years I read Joanna Macy’s book, World as Lover, World as Self. In it she describes a Buddhist exercise in compassion where you imagine people you know and consciously bless them. More recently I attended a Wrekin Trust conference in Stroud and was introduced to the idea of bringing people into consciousness and addressing them directly with my desires for them through another person (a kind of sender and receiver).  It was such a powerful experience. I guess Quakers would call either of these approaches ‘holding in the light’. 

A strange experience may be associated with this.  I had been holding my sister’s mother in law in America in the light for about a year.  She had terminal kidney failure and took a long time to die.  At three o’clock one morning I woke up from a vivid dream in which a woman in a single bed pushed herself up on her elbows, looked at me and said, “She’s gone.”  The next day I got a message from my sister to say that Barbara had died at 10 pm their time, exactly at the moment of my dream.

I believe that using the imaginative compassion meditation has helped me to become more aware of the needs of the others (maybe more compassionate).  Maybe, just maybe, something happens in that act.

Thanks Susana and Brian for your posts. I am sure that prayer takes us into a realm that is beyond description but as I said in an earlier post on this subject, I do not subscribe any longer to the kind of prayer designed to change the mind of ‘God’.... Even in the prayer of silence / empathy / holding another in the light - whatever we want to call the experience, something happens to us and to those whom we hold in our prayers. In a real sense it is not about telling ‘God’ what we want to happen - it is waiting in love and in the ever-presentness of that which we call ‘God’. It is the same sacred Spirit at work in both the pray-er and the one for whom the prayer is offered. Brian, there are many examples of the extra-ordinary happenings [dreams, visions, etc] - rest in the knowledge that your loving prayers [and doubtless those of many others] meant that your sister’s mother in law did not die alone, even if no one was physically at her side.

Thanks John. I agree that what we do is probably irrelevant.  It’s the intention and the relationship which count. I guess those who pray are are as effective as those who remain in silence or use compassionate meditation.  That which enables is the same in each.  We can’t ‘change the mind of God’ yet we can co-operate more fully in the enabling by being open and attuning ourselves to it. Maybe this is what some have called ‘co-creative’.

I’ve stopped praying too, but I feel slightly different about it than most of you. If there was a need, then I would still pray and solicit others to pray too. I’m just sort of not speaking to God at the moment

Maybe I haven’t reached the stage yet where I believe God can’t/won’t intervene and maybe I don’t want to. Whilst still a conventional Christian my daughter was seriously ill and many people did pray for her. Thankfully she did get better, but just suppose she didn’t and suppose I hadn’t tried to get God to intervene. I’m just not sure how I would feel.

I have attended Quaker meetings and was most surprised to discover that they don’t pray, although one lady was quite open to the idea. I was working in a prison at the time and I did feel that some of the inmates needed praying for, which is why I shared my concern about the matter with the Quaker lady. I was not working with the inmates in a spiritual/counselling capacity but as a Christian I still wanted to do something. The something I could do was to pray. I wanted to pray for one lad who was facing a murder charge.

Maybe we can’t change God’s mind but maybe we shouldn’t let go of the practice of prayer altogether, especially for the sake of others as RGaines intimated earlier.

Is prayer left out altogether in Progressive gatherings?

Joe, prayer is what you make it - and what you want to make it! In leading public worship I still offer biddings [e.g. Let us remember all peacemakers and peacekeepers…’] and then a period of silence, inviting congregation members to pray in whatever [silent] words they wish and to whatever /whoever they are praying to. Prayer is important to many progressive Christians, but if one has left behind an interventionist Being / God then there is no point in praying for a miraculous experience from somewhere ‘out there’. And where is the justice in such an interventionist ‘god’ deciding to heal one but not another? The deepest prayers that I know are the silences that accompany holding the hand of someone who is passing from this life into the eternity of the Spirit [but that’s a whole new topic!]. I treat prayer as the vital breath that underpins empathy and action. The words are less important than being the active answer to the prayers that I would offer if I believed in the interventionist God! The illness of your daughter and subsequent recovery speaks to me of the miracle of the Spirit within each of us not giving up without a fight - and helped and assisted by the loving concerns [yes, and the prayers offered] by those who love and care. As I experience these things, the miracles come from the power of the sacred within [doctors, nurses, concerned family and friends; etc] rather than from a ‘god’ somewhere ‘out there’. Hope this helps?

I struggle with personal prayer so I don’t ‘pray’ at home, only in Church.  At home I will light a candle and sit in quiet reflection (if it’s personal) or consideration (for others) -  sometimes with the Bible, sometimes without.  It works for me, but I get through a lot more candles!

I enjoy congregational prayer, but I don’t expect God to perform His magic.  Congregational prayer, for me, is about considering the plight of others in need or distress and putting a form of words together that tries to express the goodwill and support of the gathered Church.

Knowing that you are being prayed for can bring hope, encouragement and strength in the face of difficulty, so I think it’s beneficial.

Matt Hicks - 25 March 2011 02:13 PM

Simon,

I think you have hit the nail on the head with regards prayer but also our siritual life. It does not change God, it changes us.

Matt

But prayer does change God! - Because our understanding and experience of God is directly affected by our spiritual practice it is in and through prayer that we come to a deeper ‘understanding’ or maybe ‘appreciation’ of God. I am sure all on this forum have very different views of God now compared to their views 10 years ago. Is it not through prayer or divine dialogue that our views have changed?

I have a view of God that I can change, and that can be changed during prayer and as a result of prayer, by something beyond me, something other, potentially the ultimate otherness.

But by definition otherness lies beyond me, and beyond my grasp of it, and if I think I am affecting otherness by affecting the boundaries of otherness by how I am, how I fit up against the edge of otherness, I find otherness just moves out of reach beyond my new boundary with it.  I therefore judge that I cannot change otherness.

Did I say that my latest working model of God is Otherness?

That is not to say that my view of Otherness is entirely transcendent, ignoring the immanent dimension.  Even my own breath and body are other to my ego and thought, even the sensation of the chair I sit on and the computer keys beneath my fingers are other to me; everything created or ensouled is also other.  Hence for me the absolute otherness is immanent as well as transcendent. - which doesn’t change my judgement (above).

The uncertainty taught to us by science (quantum mechanics, relativity theories etc) still do not solve my basic posit (otherness is beyond my perspective and reach) and the uncertainty taught by psychology (interconnectedness of behaviours and world models) doesn’t change it either.

Lucy Harris - 29 September 2011 06:29 PM

I have a view of God that I can change, and that can be changed during prayer and as a result of prayer, by something beyond me, something other, potentially the ultimate otherness.

But by definition otherness lies beyond me, and beyond my grasp of it, and if I think I am affecting otherness by affecting the boundaries of otherness by how I am, how I fit up against the edge of otherness, I find otherness just moves out of reach beyond my new boundary with it.  I therefore judge that I cannot change otherness.

Did I say that my latest working model of God is Otherness?

That is not to say that my view of Otherness is entirely transcendent, ignoring the immanent dimension.  Even my own breath and body are other to my ego and thought, even the sensation of the chair I sit on and the computer keys beneath my fingers are other to me; everything created or ensouled is also other.  Hence for me the absolute otherness is immanent as well as transcendent. - which doesn’t change my judgement (above).

The uncertainty taught to us by science (quantum mechanics, relativity theories etc) still do not solve my basic posit (otherness is beyond my perspective and reach) and the uncertainty taught by psychology (interconnectedness of behaviours and world models) doesn’t change it either.

Wow - have you been drinking!! haha!
I am working with a Meister Eckhart notion of Godhead that is unchangeable and unknowable - your ‘otherness’. God, I would suggest is a human invention that we naturally construct to try and get a handle on the divine mystery. God, in this understanding, is changeable because it grows with us.

Yes I would share that idea.  We cannot do anything else but place “out there” our own projections, whcih then we like to think of as God.  As we change, God changes.

I do enjoy vigorous agreement!