Thinking about Prayer
“Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. No. All that matters is that two stood against many, that's what's important. Battle pleases you Crom, so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!”
I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately, and for some reason this prayer from the film Conan the Barbarian keeps coming back to me. Maybe because it’s an iconic cinema moment, maybe because it sums up how prayer seems to go. Best put by The Smiths really, “Please, please, please, let me get what I want.” Summarised, Conan’s prayer is little more than this: “God, I don’t talk to you because I don’t usually feel like it. But I know you, and I know what you like, so if I do what you like to get what I want, then give me what I want or else get stuffed.” It’s almost attempting to bribe or bully God by reminding him of his own nature, and then saying he’d better live up to it or else. I think most of us think of prayer a bit that way. Even if the process is more about reminding ourselves of who we think God is rather than telling him, it works out the same in the end. We lock God into an expected way of behaviour, and once you’re in that kind of a view of prayer, it becomes very easy to become disillusioned with God, to doubt or hate him. Because he doesn’t often answer the way you want. But I’ve also been thinking about another prayer.
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be your name,
Your Kingdom come,
Your Will be done
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
The Lord’s Prayer has been obsessing me of late, I keep seeing more and more in it, or so it feels. It is an anti-prayer really, if we think of prayer as asking God for the things we want. For one thing, there is no mention of “I” in it anywhere. It is a prayer for “us”, prayed by the individual for everyone. It is not a selfish prayer. When you look at it, it’s a pretty dependent and selfless prayer. In it we ask God that His Kingdom come and His Will be done. There’s nothing in it about what we want. We ask God to provide for our needs, forgive us our sins and protect us from doing harm to others and ourselves. The entire prayer is about changing us and keeping us in service to God. It’s not about bringing us what we want, but asking God to give us what he wants to give us. Trusting him for all things, beyond our own ability to see what we think we need. This is the prayer that Jesus told his followers was the very model of prayer. I’ve seen in the past people try to break this down into some kind of structural thing, that what it's really about is that first we praise God, then we ask Him for what we need, or various approaches like that. I think that’s missing the point, just trying to wrestle the whole thing back under our control. The more I look at this prayer, the more I think we miss the point of prayer, especially when we turn it into a wishlist of things we want.
As I think about prayer these days, it has become more and more about surrender and less about what I want to get out of it. God is too big for me to be able to tell him who he is, or for me to even wrap my own mind around. But in prayer, we can approach an infinite and all-powerful God, and we can ask him to speak to us. I still think he wants to hear our troubles and our desires, if we pray anything less than honestly it’s hardly respecting God. But beyond that, I think God wants us to hear him. We can’t do that if we’re busy telling him who he is and what he should do, but if we are quiet and wait on him, then there is a gap in the conversation and he can say something to us. I think that’s why Jesus said not to babble on in prayer. It’s not a monologue, it’s a conversation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately, and for some reason this prayer from the film Conan the Barbarian keeps coming back to me. Maybe because it’s an iconic cinema moment, maybe because it sums up how prayer seems to go. Best put by The Smiths really, “Please, please, please, let me get what I want.” Summarised, Conan’s prayer is little more than this: “God, I don’t talk to you because I don’t usually feel like it. But I know you, and I know what you like, so if I do what you like to get what I want, then give me what I want or else get stuffed.” It’s almost attempting to bribe or bully God by reminding him of his own nature, and then saying he’d better live up to it or else. I think most of us think of prayer a bit that way. Even if the process is more about reminding ourselves of who we think God is rather than telling him, it works out the same in the end. We lock God into an expected way of behaviour, and once you’re in that kind of a view of prayer, it becomes very easy to become disillusioned with God, to doubt or hate him. Because he doesn’t often answer the way you want. But I’ve also been thinking about another prayer.
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be your name,
Your Kingdom come,
Your Will be done
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
The Lord’s Prayer has been obsessing me of late, I keep seeing more and more in it, or so it feels. It is an anti-prayer really, if we think of prayer as asking God for the things we want. For one thing, there is no mention of “I” in it anywhere. It is a prayer for “us”, prayed by the individual for everyone. It is not a selfish prayer. When you look at it, it’s a pretty dependent and selfless prayer. In it we ask God that His Kingdom come and His Will be done. There’s nothing in it about what we want. We ask God to provide for our needs, forgive us our sins and protect us from doing harm to others and ourselves. The entire prayer is about changing us and keeping us in service to God. It’s not about bringing us what we want, but asking God to give us what he wants to give us. Trusting him for all things, beyond our own ability to see what we think we need. This is the prayer that Jesus told his followers was the very model of prayer. I’ve seen in the past people try to break this down into some kind of structural thing, that what it's really about is that first we praise God, then we ask Him for what we need, or various approaches like that. I think that’s missing the point, just trying to wrestle the whole thing back under our control. The more I look at this prayer, the more I think we miss the point of prayer, especially when we turn it into a wishlist of things we want.
As I think about prayer these days, it has become more and more about surrender and less about what I want to get out of it. God is too big for me to be able to tell him who he is, or for me to even wrap my own mind around. But in prayer, we can approach an infinite and all-powerful God, and we can ask him to speak to us. I still think he wants to hear our troubles and our desires, if we pray anything less than honestly it’s hardly respecting God. But beyond that, I think God wants us to hear him. We can’t do that if we’re busy telling him who he is and what he should do, but if we are quiet and wait on him, then there is a gap in the conversation and he can say something to us. I think that’s why Jesus said not to babble on in prayer. It’s not a monologue, it’s a conversation.
posted by Andrew Lee at 11:09 PM
2 Comments:
The Conan quotation reminds me of the way (I am told) Germanic tribes related to gods. A tribe would pray to its tribal god for victory in battle with a rival tribe but then they might also pray to the god of that rival tribe offering to worship that god if it gave them victory in battle. All very pragmatic and reciprocal.
What you describe is very different. It seems to be a one-way relationship in which the worshipper offers love and loyalty free of any expectation of any kind of return. It is selfless devotion rather than the kind of haggling demonstrated by Conan.
But how many utilise prayer in this way? I am an outsider to the whole practice but my impression is that prayer very frequently takes the form of "God help make my loved one recover from this awful condition" (sometimes with the additional incentive of "and I will promise to be a better person in future") and as far as I can tell organised religion rarely if ever dissuades us from this kind of activity.
If I were the kind of person who prayed I think I would prefer yours to that of Conan. That is of course assuming that God is all-powerful and all-good. If that were so then asking God to change things or do things differently seems utterly futile as well as rather presumptuous.
There are many different forms of prayer. Prayers asking for things, prayers of intercession, and prayers of simple worship. The prayers asking for things are the ones that most people know about, or focus on.
It was once said that prayer changes us more than it changes God. The Lord's prayer asks God to act in His righteousness and look after us and lead us in His will. In other words, it's not one way, but the person praying is asking to be receptive to God's leading. It reverses the normal attitude, which is "God do what I say". I think that way of praying makes it a one way relationship, because we tell God what to do and then wait for him to act. There is no space for God to respond, because the conversation is ended. But asking God to act is not futile, because to come to Him in anything other than honesty would be dishonouring to God. And sometimes He does want to give us what we ask for, other times, His will is not ours. But it's about being willing to accept His will. Not easy, and not reducible into any kind of logic really, but it does make sense if you accept the idea of a God who is good, but beyond your understanding.
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