Q & A for 1 May 2014: Prayer? with Bishop John Shelby Spong "A New Christianity for a New World"
Question & Answer
Stephen Ficke from Kansas writes:Question:
I have read your book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, and it brought about fundamental changes in my beliefs. I felt like a complete dunce when I thought about how I had been taught in my lifetime association with the United Methodist Church to understanding the Bible. I also heard you speak recently in Topeka at both Washburn University and Central Christian Church.
One subject I am very curious about that I’m not aware that you have addressed is that of prayer. I know it’s a huge can of worms, but it is one about which my wife and I are at odds. We have heard all the standard responses regarding prayer from books, pastors and tracts. We are wondering, however, what your “take” on the whole prayer subject is. We have pretty much given it up after years of not feeling it made any difference in our lives. Nothing has changed in our lives as a result of our prayers. I used to feel so inadequate because I thought the problem was that I must not be praying “correctly” or wasn’t praying deeply enough. Maybe the issue was that my heart or wasn’t truly in it, I told myself. My failure in prayer was thus my fault. Now that I’ve stopped praying, I feel those burdens have been lifted from me.
As an example, a number of years back, a fundamental Christian friend and I went to visit a golfing buddy who was in the final stages of cancer. My friend prayed fervently for his condition, laid hands on him, etc. Within weeks, our buddy had died. I felt guilty, foolish and embarrassed. This is only one instance of why I feel prayer is overrated.
Answer:
Dear Stephen,
I receive more questions on prayer than on any other subject. Yet no matter how often I respond, the questions keep coming. Perhaps that means that my take is no more adequate than anyone else’s. Perhaps it means there is no adequate answer. When I wrote A New Christianity for a New World, I included two chapters on prayer. Those two chapters still accurately express what my present understanding of prayer is.
I believe the difficulty that most people have with prayer falls into two categories: First, they identify prayer with saying prayers; they are not the same. Second, the way they understand prayer is predicated on their definition of God. For most people in our culture God is thought of primarily in what is called theistic terms, that is God is a being, external to the world, supernatural in power and capable of miraculous behavior. This theistic definition is for many reasons increasingly unbelievable to modern men and women. So deeply is God identified with the theistic definition of God, however, that if one does not believe in this definition the only alternative is that one must be an atheist.
If the prayer for your golfing buddy (which in your mind resulted in his death rather than his cure) was a problem for you, perhaps you should examine the presuppositions that both you and your fundamentalist friend brought to that prayer experience. Death is universal; it is not a matter of “if” we die, but of “when” we die. Was your prayer supposed to keep him alive forever? Was his cancer, somehow the result of divine punishment that a favorably-inclined theistic deity might have reversed because of the sincerity of your prayer? Does the fact that your prayer was not answered mean that he deserved to die or was it that your prayer was inadequate? Millions of people die each year of cancer. Why did you think it might have been different because your friend prayed? Do you understand God after the analogy of your own humanity just without human limitations? If God’s will directs all of life, was your prayer designed to change God’s will? Why do you think that your will was more godlike than God’s will? These questions reflect just a few of the unrecognized and unspoken pre-suppositions that cause people to feel so lost in the activity of prayer.
The Bible’s assertion that human life was created in God’s image is, I believe, simply backward. The fact is that we human beings have created the God we tend to worship in our own image. Human beings act as if they can define God and library shelves are filled with books that attempt to do so. Is that not a strange assumption? Can an insect embrace what it means to be a bird? Can a horse embrace what it means to be human? Why do we think that human beings can embrace what it means to be God? We constantly pretend, however, that we can define God, but at the same time we also strangely assume that God should and has conferred upon us through our prayers the power to change the course of history. I love the quotation from a third century BCE Greek philosopher named Xenophanes, who is purported to have said: “If horses had Gods, they would look like horses!”
So for me to deal with the issue we call prayer means that that I must first learn to commune with the source of life, love and being until I begin to see myself as part of who and what God is. Second, it means that I must move beyond the theistic definition of God, as one with whom I continue to play “parent-child” games. Is it ever appropriate for the child to expect the parent always to meet the child’s needs or to do the child’s will? Thirdly it means that I can no longer think of God after the analogy of Santa Claus, who rewards me with all that my heart desires if I am “good,” but who punishes me with bad things if I am bad. To say it another way before any of us will begin to understand prayer then all of us must grow up both spiritually and theologically. When that occurs, and only when that occurs, can we begin to have a real discussion about both what prayer is and how prayer operates
If prayer is something we live instead of something we do, as I believe it is, then we will spend a lifetime, not a column, seeking its meaning.~~John Shelby Spong
-------
-------
Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@johnshelbyspong.com or 253-507-8678.
Our mailing address is:
ProgressiveChristianity.org
708 Broadway
Suite 105
Tacoma, WA 98402 United States
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment