By Eric Blauer
Some people present prayer as an enveloping Snuggie, a does of valium, a hug or another action point on their personal organizer. It’s a saintly sedative to make you nicer, calmer and more agreeable like camomile tea or Uggs.
Prayer is geriatric, something old people do when they are too weak to engage the world with grit, pluck and nerve. It’s easily swallowed, boring and bland, a meaningless meal of mushy self-actualization. It’s something to endure and celebrate when it’s over with a rush to the plate or a drive to get onto the real matters at hand.
Prayer has been domesticated, Oprahfied, declawed and defanged.
It’s been taught as tuning out, daydreaming, brooding, emoting or simply exhaling.
In some circles prayer is an act of flagellation, meant to reduce oneself to a quivering jelly of self loathing, condemnation and do-better-ism. It’s what failures, give-ups and whiners do when life has proved them to be whimpering shmucks and incompetent failures. Prayer isn’t what strong individuals do. It’s for people who are at the mercy of the universe, problems and people.
Prayer is more often presented like a ‘tap out’ instead of a ‘tag in’ to the ring and is it any wonder prayer meetings are almost always the least attended gatherings in our churches?
We saw some of this prayer angst in the collective frustration of our global community during the Paris terror attacks that came out in the slogan: “Don’t Pray for Paris.” People are fed up with saintly sentimentalities that seem pointless in the face of such brutal atrocities. I can’t blame people for wanting to put away the Nerf niceties of religious hashtagging. Our world is redlining and yet our prayer meetings have the tone of kids shows, the smell of aromatherapy and are barely audible over the mouse-like mumbling.
It wan’t always so:
“And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.”
-Acts 4:31
Too many prayer meetings put us to sleep instead of shake the building. The droning of petty prayer points and mindless repetition derails us from accessing anything that moves us beyond the desire to end as quickly as possible. Decorum has replaced desperation, rote has replaced the riotous, unpredictable wind and fire of the upper room. We’ve lost our drunken tongues of fire and exchanged them for candles, kleenex and gentle background music.
There are times when even God says stopping praying:
“…I want no more of your pious meetings.
I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals.
They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them!
When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look.
Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen…”
-Isaiah 1:13b-15a
Maybe it’s time to really start really examining our prayers and prayer meetings. Have we lost touch with our own souls? Have we sanitized our true feelings and thoughts and trivialized life by our soft handling of reality? Have we edited out all the truth from our confessions, medicated our pain and submitted to the spiritually dead or dying in our midst? It might be high time to revisit the Imprecatory Psalms again. The Imprecatory Psalms are prayer/songs so designated because of their curses toward an enemy. The verb “imprecate” means “to pray evil against” or “to invoke curse upon” another. Imprecatory (curse) Psalms (Ps 5, 10, 17, 35, 58, 59, 69, 70, 79, 83, 109, 129, 137, 140).
Christians are to handle these psalms in a new covenant posture but in no way are our true feelings and thoughts of life meant to be buried, we need power not pious platitudes.
“And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” -Acts 4:29-30
These days call for a people filled with the word and the wind (Ezekiel 37:4-10) who are knee deep in the valley of bones. A prophetic voice that draws the torrents and thunders of God, animates the dead and awakens a generation of trouble makers (1 Kings 18:17) to assume their role as people who tun this world upside down(Acts 17:6). The suffering, persecution, hate, fear, instability, terror, displacement, dismemberment, rape, slavery, martyrdoms, bombing and death demand more from us.
If our prayers aren’t shaking things up, than I doubt we are true peacemakers in the earth and just maybe, we should stop praying.
So, what DO we do?
Pray to God for a faith that’s alive, authentic and active.
Overcome evil with good.
Vote in leaders who will protect and provide.
Live hospitable lives that build bridges more than barriers with all people, especially people of other faith and culture.
Get out of dead religion.
So the answer to not praying is… to pray?
I think the answer is to pray, but with meaning. Too often we offer up empty prayers, meaningless ones – almost as a way to comfort ourselves?
Amen.
Eric did you see the comment just now on Facebook?