What Do You Pray For?

I was out on a camping trip with my Boy Scout Troop a few weeks ago. My Assistant Scoutmaster knows I am a heretic, though I only confided to him my non-Christian status during the brief time I was a Deist. That was enough to get him rolling in fits of righteous apoplexy, so I haven't informed him of my subsequent change to Atheism. In any event, our trips are nowadays occasions for frequent discussions on the various issues surrounding Christianity and the nature of God.

On this night, we had a problem. One of our scouts was acting out in a dangerous manner, and I fussed at him, just to keep him from injuring himself. The scout went off to his tent to sulk, a pretty common response for this particular youth. My friend urged me to go and try to resolve the situation, as we needed him to help participate in a camp activity a short while later. Being somewhat new at this Scoutmaster business, I got up and headed for the boy's tent, thinking furiously about what I could say to make things right.

I made a good decision, treating the kid with courtesy and respect. He responded well, and agreed to join us in our activity. We spoke quietly between ourselves (I sat on the ground outside the tent, in accordance with BSA rules) for several minutes. When I was through, I went back to the main area of our campsite, and my assistant asked me how things had gone. I told him things were OK, and that the kid had agreed to join us. I said, "I'll bet you didn't think I had it in me."

I was a little surprised when he said, "No, I didn't. In fact, I prayed to God that he'd help you find the wisdom you needed for this problem." I was unable to reply at that time (it's fairly common that our exchanges over religion happen in a hit-and-run manner), due to our schedule. However, it did get me thinking, about the nature of prayer, and the logic (particularly in the Christian religion) of prayer.

In the Christian world, people are told they should model their prayers on "The Lord's Prayer" (Matt 6:9-12). It contains several different types of prayer - thanksgiving, praise, confessional, and making requests to God. The logic of prayers of thanksgiving is of little consequence to me, being an atheist. To me, prayers of praise only serve to reinforce the habitual thought processes of a person's religion. Confessional prayers always struck me as being a matter of dwelling on things you've done that you regret and feel bad about, though at least some good can come about if doing so can help in learning a lesson from the events you dwell on. Unfortunately, this doesn't often happen in the Christian mindset, because Christians are told that confession of sins is followed by God's forgiveness - hardly a process conducive to helping a person learn to avoid repeating an undesirable action or mistake.

My main concern in this essay is examining the logic of requesting things or favors from God. First, let's see what the Christian Bible says about prayer. In Matt 20:21,22, we have:

This is a pretty remarkable statement. At first glance, it looks like Jesus is giving his followers carte blanche. However, there's a loophole. The person asking God for something must have faith. In other verses, we see that the faith must only be as great as a seed of mustard. Still other verses (particularly in the book of 1 John) say that prayers are only granted if the prayer is in accordance with God's will. People make much about God's promises, but it appears in many places that these promises contain fair-sized loopholes.

So we get back to my friend praying for me in my sticky situation. First of all, it's obvious that he thought I would not be able to solve my problem on my own. This, in spite of the fact that I have been a parent for nearly 17 years, and that I have been a Scout leader for over 5 years. So he had a low opinion of my ability to use my experience in these areas. I have no problem with this, but it is telling. So his next step was to ask God to help me. On one hand, my friend was asking for God to do something, using his faith as the determining factor. Had I failed in my effort, it would have meant that his faith was not good enough, not that my abilities weren't good enough. An interesting twist. On the other hand, the prayer had nothing to do with it, because God's will was already set (God being omniscient). In which case, my friend was relegated to the role of a cheer leader, hoping that whatever was going to happen would happen. Luckily for him, the thing that was going to happen actually did happen - a twist that's just stupid, I think.

But what about another aspect of prayer, that of asking God for mental benefits? I constantly hear of people asking God for "strength" or "patience" or "wisdom" for themselves. Once, back when I was in college, I was in a bad situation. I had taken a course in differential equations, under one of the oldest, most incomprehensible professors I had ever had the misfortune to study with. On the eve of the final, I realized I had zero chance of passing the course. Being a math major, failing the course would be a huge setback. So I prayed for divine help, and went to the final, confident that the light would flash above my head at the last moment and God would save the day! You can guess the result. I had no more clue about the problems after I started than I would have before the course began. Well, not quite that bad, but close.

I rationalized to myself that this failure of prayer was in accordance with God's will (using the second loophole I mentioned earlier). Now, I am aware that I was on my own. Believing that I could obtain any sort of knowledge by supernatural means was a big mistake - it doesn't happen in the real world.

On the other hand, I used to pray to God, asking for answers and insights to problems that puzzled me, and the answers just seemed to pop into my mind. How could that happen? My opinion of this is that the human mind is a pretty complex item. It works on several different levels simultaneously. Have you ever found yourself trying to keep from thinking a particular word? How could you do that if you weren't already aware that you wanted to think it? Like I said, it's a labyrinth in there! When I wanted the solution to a problem, the thought would sometimes pop up immediately. Sometimes, it even came to me in a dream (that's where I sometimes get my best story ideas). Sometimes, the problem will be "set on the back burner," and later pop back up with a solution all ready to go. The reason I know that these happenings have nothing to do with God or the supernatural is that they continue, in exactly the same manner, to this day, in spite of the fact that I now think about things having to do with atheism. I seriously doubt that God would supply me with ideas and answers helpful to my disbelief. I also wonder why it should be that during the process of losing my faith, God never sent me the "right" answers when I prayed over the questions that disturbed me so much?

So, what do you pray for? For the dice to fall your way when playing Monopoly? You may notice your hits and misses will even out. Do you pray for the strength to make it through a crisis? You most likely had the strength to begin with. Do you pray for mountains to be tossed in the sea? My lack of faith shouldn't keep you from getting it done. Do you pray for things to happen as they would anyway? I think you'll always get that prayer answered, though I can't imagine what advantage there could be in it.