Ever hear this: “Are you prayed up enough?” Or “I’m just not prayed up.” Or “we need to get prayed up.”
Unfortunately we often say this in a way that suggests if we were “prayed up” enough, then everything would be okay. “Get prayed up,” wrote one blog I came across, “and good things will happen.”
Oh, really? Is prayer a magical formula? Say enough prayers, get the “prayer temperature gauge” high enough, and nothing bad will happen to you. Prayer–not God–becomes your shield, not to mention a measure of your righteousness. If anything bad happens to you, clearly you weren’t prayed up enough.
But this kind of thinking just doesn’t hold water theologically. Jesus said that if the world hated him, it would hate us even more. The leaders of the early church – who most likely spent far more time in prayer than you or I – had bad things happen to them as a matter of course.
Prayer is to be communing with God – not the performance of a deed done purely for its shielding qualities.
The solution is not to get “prayed up” enough. The solution is to “pray without ceasing.”
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What you are describing here is a form of “Christian animism”–the false worldview that affirms if we get the right formula and work all its elements properly, then we hold power over the spiritual forces to get what we want/need. Thanks for reminding us that biblical prayer is communing with God.
That was an interesting article. I see what John's getting at although I, too, don't really think of it as “animism.” I would call it more “Christian spiritism” or “Christian mysticism” or “Christian magic”: the idea that we can control the world, the events around us, and even God with the right application of the words of a prayer or the emotions behind it or even the right amount of belief-in-the-impossible. There is “having faith” (belief) and there is “keeping faith” or being loyal to your King. Having faith is important – but I think it's less about believing in the impossible that you want done (not necessarily what God wants), and more about believing in the impossible that God says he will do. Christian magic gets out of the realm of letting God be God and believing that God will be God, and more into the realm of believing God is all-powerful and can be controlled or cajoled to do what you want. Like a jinn in a bottle.
John's response triggered curiosity in me. “Christian Animism”? Does such a thing exist? So I did a little research.
Most definitions of animism didn't seem to apply to his response, but I did run across this: http://lingamish.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/chris.... There was some application in this to support the teaching that we have power over inanimate objects by sheer faith and belief and prayer.
I do, however, totally agree with his definition of how some mainstream churches represent prayer, miracles and faith. Many times to the destruction of those believers who, with all intent and purpose to “do the right thing”, found themselves a victim of unanswered prayers, or, at best, not answered as they had intended. Good subject to consider. Thanks, guys.
Yes. Well said!
The implication (and truth of scripture, really) of all of this is that we absolutely, unashamedly, and without argument need to be in communion with God, so that our prayers do indeed line up with what HE has in mind. He promised in James that if we lack wisdon to ask, and He will give it. Our expectations of God too often reflect our own selfish motives, and that is dangerous.
Good stuff.
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