Like a Prayer

[vovat]

Today is the first Thursday in May, which makes it the National Day of Prayer. I can't say I've ever really been into the prayer thing, but hey, to each his or her own. I've seen it suggested that prayer is really a way for people to work through things and build themselves up to face challenges. It's sort of like what I suggested in this post about how belief in God can sometimes inspire people to take matters into their own hands. That only applies in certain situations, though. Praying for success in battle is one thing, and praying for the enemy to turn into little black ants quite another. An all-powerful deity SHOULD be able to turn the enemy into ants, but I'd say the chances of it happening are basically nil, unless you have access to an Infinite Improbability Drive. And when people say, "I'll pray for you" in response to a disagreement, that's really just a smug way to get in the last word without having any actual argument. It's like, "You may THINK you've won this argument, but GOD is on my side!" Yeah, what makes you so sure?


Perhaps even more ridiculous is prayer for a massive paradigm shift, like the Catholic Prayer to the Virgin Mary for an End to Abortion. Try to puzzle this out. People will say that abortion is sinful because God thinks it's wrong, but God apparently won't do anything about it unless He receives enough signatures on a petition, so to speak. Do these people think the Virgin Mary doesn't know about abortion, and we have to let her know? Also, is God really the one you should be consulting about saving unborn babies? God kills babies all the time!

Remember the story of David and Bathsheba, and how God snuffed out their newborn baby to punish the king for his wicked behavior? Wouldn't someone who's truly pro-life argue that this baby is a separate individual who doesn't deserve to have its life ended because of the sins of its father? If you really desire a reduction in the number of abortions, maybe instead of complaining to Killy McGee and His girlfriend, you should do what you can to combat unwanted pregnancies. At one point it was believed that a woman could avoid getting pregnant simply by not having sex, but that was eventually disproved by Mary herself, not to mention Ea, Isis, and the various virgins impregnated by Zeus.

So the conclusion seems to me that anti-abortion activists should be in favor of birth control, but Catholics and some other religious denominations oppose that as well. Makes you wonder if they're opposed to abortion so much as they are against women having sex for any reason other than to bring more potential converts and crusade cannon fodder into the world.


And while I'm on the subject of prayer, don't you love that there are still people who, presumably with straight faces, argue that removing mandatory prayer from public schools made everything bad? Yeah, because everything was awesome when kids were forced to pray, right? But no, since it's possible to doctor statistics to make it look like the separation of church and state being enforced led to a rise in teen pregnancy and drug use (I'm sure the Cold War and its various ramifications had nothing to do with this), it MUST be true! And the Bible is accurate because it says it is! How anyone can still make these arguments without being laughed at is beyond me, but I guess there really is a sucker born every minute. I also have to wonder what kind of prayer would be appropriate for a setting containing people of various faiths, and some who aren't religious at all. "Dear God, or multiple gods, or lack thereof, please bless me. Unless you're not one of the deities who does that." You probably haven't really thought it through, have you, public prayer advocates? And what are school prayers actually FOR, anyway? Asking God to provide new blackboard erasers?



If you believe in prayer, go ahead and do it. Hey, you're not hurting anybody, and maybe the joke will be on the skeptics when it actually comes true. But remember that prayer isn't a substitution for thought and action, and that you can't force others to share your religious convictions.

Comments

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

And when people say, "I'll pray for you" in response to a disagreement, that's really just a smug way to get in the last word without having any actual argument.

Oh yes. It bugs me to no end when people do that! It sounds so self-righteous, and is not what prayer is for, and is exactly the misuse of religion (on the smallest level) that people who claim to hate religion use as their reason for hating religion (ie, people use religion to put other people down, therefore religion is bad). And there is SO MUCH GOOD in the world that has come out of religion-- magnificent artwork, music, architecture, literature on one hand; great and small acts of social good on the other; but because of the people who have done BAD THINGS with religion, they insist religion is therefore bad, and... okay, I'm off on a tangent, but I was thinking about this earlier this week.

Anyway, the way I believe in prayer, it's that prayer is something for YOU spiritually-- it's for your own self-improvement, not something you can use to beat other people with. What you said here, I've seen it suggested that prayer is really a way for people to work through things and build themselves up to face challenges, is probably true, but to take it to a more spiritual level, from a believer's point of view, it's GETTING YOURSELF REALIGNED with the Will of the Universe, or whatever terminology you want to use to describe the at-one-ment aspect of prayer. Living prayerfully, praying all the time, refers to this state of being/awareness, as opposed to literally saying words of a prayer constantly.

But off the subject of prayer but on the subject of the rest of your post, So the conclusion seems to me that anti-abortion activists should be in favor of birth control, but Catholics and some other religious denominations oppose that as well. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I consider myself a bad Catholic. I believe in birth control. No, that's not true, I actually have very little faith in birth control from personal experience, but I don't think birth control is WRONG, we'll put it that way; and part of my argument FOR IS that it makes the anti-abortion argument stronger. I am as you know staunchly Pro-Life. And the difference between abortion and miscarrage is WHO CHOOSES who lives and dies. I don't think people have the right to choose who lives and dies. People shouldn't murder, whether in the heat of anger, whether the person was legally tried of a horrible crime and found guilty, or whether the person is too underdeveloped to breathe on their own but does in fact have complete DNA, the parts of a human (underdeveloped though they may be), and a beating heart (comes about 4 weeks after conception, when their mother may have only just realized she's pregnant). Now yes, that is my opinion, I'm not speaking for anyone else, but that's what I consider "Pro-Life" to be all about. Anyway, this would be another tangent....

And my comment is too long, so I'll put the second half elsewhere. Go me and my tangents.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I have thought about, what could you call it, Secular Prayerfulness. I thought about it because I make everyone say grace before dinner, and when I thought of them asking "why?" someday, the reason I came up with was, in fact, secular: because it's important to be grateful for what you have. Saying grace is taking the time out to, well, say "Thank you" to God that you have a meal at all, but all that is is Showing Gratitude, not taking what you have for granted, etc. Someone in my Moms' Group told me that prayers should contain five things, and she had a nifty mneumonic device for remembering that I forget, so how good was that, but the concepts of those five things were Giving Thanks, Showing Contrition for your sins (secular version would be "mistakes" or "mean things you did"), Praise (don't know how that could be worked into a secular prayer-- it really couldn't), and Asking for help/what you need. I guess I completely forget what the fifth thing was. Anyway, so Secular "prayer" would include Showing gratitude for what you have, thinking about things you could have done better, and affirming a goal for yourself, whether something internal about yourself you want to improve, or something outside that you want to accomplish. Such "prayer" done daily WOULD help people live more consciously (and consciencely?) and help fix the problems the Lack of Mandatory Prayer has supposedly allowed, but I doubt the people who push for Mandatory Prayer would go for it.

You might be interested, the last entry Angie posted in her spirituality-themed blog was about prayer, if you'd like her Unitarian take on it.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Living prayerfully, praying all the time, refers to this state of being/awareness, as opposed to literally saying words of a prayer constantly.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why people who believe in prayer would think it necessary to speak them out loud. Isn't God supposed to know what you're thinking?

No, that's not true, I actually have very little faith in birth control from personal experience, but I don't think birth control is WRONG, we'll put it that way; and part of my argument FOR IS that it makes the anti-abortion argument stronger.

Which is part of why I think the mainstream Catholic position isn't so much anti-abortion as it is anti-sex. But you wouldn't get as many people behind it if you actually CALLED it the latter.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

The thing is, if prayer had been mandatory in public schools when I'd been growing up, I doubt I would have made a fuss about it. Hey, it would have been time that teachers wouldn't have been able to use for assigning homework! {g} That's one reason why I think the problem with school prayer (aside from the obvious constitutional thing) isn't so much that it would bother atheists as that it would followers of other religions, for whom a Christian prayer could be blasphemy. Sure, I would have thought the prayer sessions were pointless, but so is the Pledge of Allegiance, and I still said that every day.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why people who believe in prayer would think it necessary to speak them out loud.

Well that's a different kind of prayer. It's not so much God Knows What Your Praying as much as what the process of praying does to YOU. From a mystical standpoint, spoken words have a magical effect-- that's deep in mythology the world over-- so a spoken prayer has power in that respect. From a more yogic standpoint, speaking, creating sounds, works different parts of your body (or different energy centers, the more spiritual you want to get about it), so it's praying MORE FULLY, incorporating more of yourself into the process of praying. So there is definitely a place for spoken prayer. It's just not the ONLY kind of prayer.