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#1
07-07-2002, 05:31 AM
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a little niggle about praying/worship
first up, im agnostic but as long its making other peoples lives better ive got nothing against the concept of god, worship etc.
one thing that does annoy me is that its very hard to get a sensible response to my questions about religeon, instead of a proper answer i just get told im nitpicking (which i guess is true to an extent..) anyway, onto my point, in most religeons ive come across God in whatever form he is supposed to exist is all seeing all knowing. why therefore do people feel the need to pray/worship when their god already knows how they feel about him/it/her. answers ive got back include 'to show our appreciation', 'to show our dedication' but again, gods all seeing all knowing, he already knows how much you appreciate him and how dedicated you are. so please, discuss, disprove me by all means, M. 
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#3
07-07-2002, 07:45 AM
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No, no, no.
The prayer isn't for God, it's for you. Every Christian church believes that prayer serves two purposes. 1. To enhance your relationship with God. 2. To bring the individual worshipper into the faith community. Sure, God knows about your plight. The prayer (of help, forgiveness, thanks, etc.) is for you, to help deepen your understanding of God, your relationship with him, and your place in the world. Let's understand that, for the nonbelieving, this does not apply at all. I'm just trying to answer a question, not draw flame.
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#4
07-07-2002, 07:58 AM
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The Jewish approach is slightly different. God is all-knowing, but He gives mankind free will to make choices. Prayer is more about expressing thanks and fulfilling obligations to God, than about petitioning for favors. Thus, choosing to perform prayer services is a free-will decision about following God's Rules.
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#5
07-07-2002, 09:45 AM
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It's also a form of meditiation, and a self-reminder.
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#6
07-07-2002, 10:56 AM
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It's not only about "enhancing your relationship with God", but it's also a time when you can allow his Holy Spirit to "fill you up" as it's referred to. It's also a time to reflect on all the things God is (and Thank Him for that), a time to pray for the needs of others and yourself, a time to ask for forgiveness and seek his face, which means (to me) to open yourself up to learning his ways and becoming a more Godly human being in your every day life.
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#8
07-07-2002, 12:28 PM
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#9
07-07-2002, 12:50 PM
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This may sound strange, considering I've just started a Pit thread about something which happened in church today, but here goes. Please keep in mind that everything I'm writing is based on my peculiar experiences and structure of belief. Yes, God is all-knowing and all powerful, and yes, I believe that asking in the form of prayer works. I think it indicates an openness to receiving those answers and to believing. I indulge in informal prayer pretty often, sometimes with words, sometimes without. I find I'm even praying now, trying to find just the right words, the right things to say. Every so often, however, I need the strength and structure of formal prayer and worship.
The Wiccans I know would tell you you can raise and access more power through formal ritual. I've also found that going to an Episcopal/Anglican church service strengthens and renews me in a way that every day living doesn't. A decade ago, when I was close to catatonic, to being soul-dead as a result of clinical depression, the catatonia broke during a routine Episcopal mass. This morning, I went to church very unsettled, very ungrounded, deliberately looking for that grounding. It came about, albeit in a most unusual, unexpected, and unpleasant fashion, but it did happen (Put down the 2x4, God. Please?). To put it in human terms, I'd say the difference between no prayer, casual prayer, and formal prayer is the difference between having a bunch of friends spontaneously getting together and doing something, a general invitation of "Hey guys, let's do something!", and a written invititation. CJ
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#13
07-07-2002, 05:06 PM
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My perspective may be a little different, as my concept of God is a bit off the beaten track, but the main (authentic) reason for praying is to gain understanding or insight into your situation.
Who you are, one of your authentic senses of self, is God -- a sense of identity that you share with everything else that Is -- but that's not how you experience self on an ongoing basis. Most of the time you're going to be pretty immersed in your local individual sense of self (1st person singular self) and the perspective of that; meanwhile, most of the time that prayer would be of benefit to you, what you need is the larger-picture perspective that you attain by getting out of 1st person singular, and that requires a change of focus, a shift of mind-set, and this act of refocusing is prayer, i.e., becoming One with God.
__________________
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#15
07-07-2002, 06:33 PM
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My smart-ass answer as to why prayer (in the sense of asking God for favors) and worship are necessary:
God is a father figure. He is imbued with all the characteristics of the father you had (or wish you had) when you were a little kid. He protects you from big meanies, He's bigger and stronger than the other gods out there, you can run to Him when you're scared, and He makes sure you get enough to eat. However, He is also watching you and judging your actions (sometimes when you can't even see Him), He punishes you when you get out of line (e.g. by making unlucky circumstances befall you), He demands your respect and admiration (and will withhold giving you presents if He doesn't get it, the judgmental bastard), and most importantly, He doesn't actually know what you want unless you tell him, and even then He will only grant your request if you're really good and you ask nicely. Thus, prayer (in the sense of asking God to do something) is the psychological equivalent of begging your daddy for that new shiny red wagon.
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#17
07-07-2002, 08:02 PM
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My smart-ass responses
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#18
07-07-2002, 08:48 PM
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If you believe his will is good and your life is in his hands ... then, again, why pray?
He seems to have it covered.
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#20
07-08-2002, 02:16 AM
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I think Mr. Moto got it right. The prayer is really for you. Prayer serves the same purpose as meditation does in Eastern religions. The difference is that the Eastern religions by and large teach that you are meditating to effect your own state of mind, while Christianity masks the real purpose by suggesting that you are doing it because God is listening to you. While I don't see how prayer could be effective in changing any external events, I CAN see how it could be effective in changing one's own state of mind.
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#22
07-08-2002, 05:03 AM
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Prayers can be answered in many different ways - changing your state of mind could be one of them... Grim
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#23
07-08-2002, 06:18 AM
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#24
07-08-2002, 06:53 AM
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I suppose all of our concepts of God are going to be limited, not to mention expressed in very abbreviated shorthand. Having said that, I think prayer makes a lot more sense if you quit using the limited concept of God as SuperPerson: a God-Entity who has thoughts, opinions, attitudes, and the rest of what you'd call a state of mind on Tuesday afternoon, and who mulls things over and reaches conclusions by Tuesday evening.
Western theology has problems with the idea that we are God (sounds blasphemous) and I am no highly studied Christian theologian (I'm as inclined to simply discard a Christian idea that doesn't fit my personal theology as I am to try to reconcile them), but insofar as Jesus of Nazareth said "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" and also taught us to pray saying "OUR Father who art in heaven...", I suggest it is not so blasphemous after all: God is a lot more than merely us, but God is in us and we are in God. Therefore the "seeking a state of mind" aspect of prayer is not separate from the "communicating with God" part -- prayer is the act of getting in touch with God, of whom you are a part, and who resides within you. (God also resides external to you, but that's not the avenue through which you communicate with God).
__________________
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#25
07-08-2002, 06:57 AM
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#26
07-08-2002, 02:23 PM
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Um, so in conclusion from this thread I've learnt: God actually never answers prayer, he just does what is right for people , and therefore prayer is just a tool to make us feel better. Does that sum it up?
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#27
07-08-2002, 03:59 PM
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Not to get too sidetracked, but I don't just "accept" things without evidence. But of course, I'm not suggesting that everyone has to agree with me. As an atheist, it's my opinion that the only real effect of prayer is to change the state of mind of the person who is praying (or to make a person feel good to the extent that they know they are being prayed for by someone else). Quote:
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#28
07-09-2002, 04:20 AM
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“Dear God, please get me a new bicycle” is a fairly immature kind of prayer. It’s the kind of thing a child might say to his or her parent, but it’s not what an adult would say to a parent. Adults don’t expect their parents to give them new bicycles. In adulthood, you find a new way of speaking to your parents. It’s the same with prayer.
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#29
07-09-2002, 05:35 AM
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Whether or not prayers anwered by 'natural' means are actually answered is entirely arbitrary though. If a child prays for a new bicycle, what criteria should we impose in considering that God (assuming for the moment that we believe he is real)had a hand in answering? - should the bicycle have to materialise out of thin air? - should the parents feel strangely and inexplicably moved to buy it secretly? or can it not also be valid (even if only from the limited, naive view of the child) that the parents knew the child wanted one and bought it because of that?
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#30
07-09-2002, 08:22 AM
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Grim
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#31
07-09-2002, 09:45 AM
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A little of a tangent, perhaps, but reminds me of a couple of years ago when I unintentionally offended the heck out of my sister-i-law. We were to have Easter dinner at her home. She asked if we wished to attend Easter services at their Lutheran church - her husband was playing trumpet.
What impressed me most about the service (other than its interminable length!) was the lack of any acknowledgement of the here and now. It was all - "Because Christ died and rose, we will live forever! Alleluiah!" But I kept my thoughts to myself out of politeness. During dinner, she kept asking me how I liked the service. I repeatedly smiled and expressed noncommittal pleasantries along the lines of, "It was nice." "The music was nice." "Sure is a beautiful church." Keep in mind that she is well aware of the fact that her sister, I, and our kids are devout - tho by no means evangelical - humanists/atheists. In response to the nth such question, I responded with my own question, namely, "Why does your God need to be worshipped?" Seemed to smack a little of insecurity on his part. See, in my mind, it seemed the time, effort, and money represented by that Easter service might be better spent - say - feeding the poor or providing some other social service. Or directed at giving more guidance at how to live your own day-to-day existence. I thought it was a legitimate question, and I asked it honestly with no intention to offend. Well, she wouldn't speak to me for over a year. She was incredibly upset that I would mention such thoughts in front of her impressionable 13 year old son. I still think it a legitimate question. If I were to believe in a God, When selecting among the options I'd choose one that preferred "worship" expressed in socially beneficial deeds and personal growth, instead of group repetition of traditional pageantry.
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#32
07-09-2002, 09:56 AM
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Just to add one more point. The Hebrew word "to pray" hispallel is a reflexive verb (an action that one does to oneself).
Zev Steinhardt
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#33
07-09-2002, 07:05 PM
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blowero, I really was missing that cup of tea, apparently. I read this,
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Dinsdale, you said, [quote]. If I were to believe in a God, When selecting among the options I'd choose one that preferred "worship" expressed in socially beneficial deeds and personal growth, instead of group repetition of traditional pageantry.[/b] Why not both? To me, the socially beneficial deeds and, to a lesser extent, personal growth are an outward expression of my faith as a form of worship. On the other hand, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm also quite active in the pageantry part of it, both literally, by helping out with the Christmas pageant, and a bit more figuratively by singing in the choir, reading lessons, etc. I can't explain this, and it may be considered a bit New Age-y, but there is a definate energy, a definate strength I find in attending church services which is harder to acheive on my own. Yes, the words may be meaningless to some (hence one of my objections to "under God" in the PoA), but there is definately something there. In my religious context, I suppose it's the Holy Spirit. It is certainly life-sustaining, restoring, and healing, but I can't explain it in rational, scientific terms. I don't do ritual for the sake of ritual or go to church just to socialize (among other things, I'm not all that good at socializing). I go because I experience something there I do not elsewhere and because formal acknowledgement of my relationship with God matters to me. It is not my place to say whether it matters to God. I assume so, but for over a decade I assumed I was ugly. I could be wrong about this, too. On the other hand, unlike the ugliness, this feels right. Sorry I can't give you better evidence, CJ
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#34
07-10-2002, 09:03 AM
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cj - I did not intend to imply that there is no conceivable legitimate benefit to worship or pageantry. Tho it happens to not be my personal cup of tea. That is why I have relatively little dispute with folk who acknowledge that the religion/philoosophy they practice is the result of a studied examination of what is bast for them personally. I strongly disagree, however, with "one true church", my-way-or-the-highway type of folk.
At the very least, I thought the topic was worthy of discussion. And I mistakenly interpreted her repeated and insistent inquiries, and her apparent dissatisfaction with my banal pleasantries in response, as representing a desire and capacity for intelligent interchange on a topic I find interesting and important. I was mistaken. Oh well, that makes one more person with whom I can freely converse at length about the weather. Hot enough for ya?
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#35
07-10-2002, 02:21 PM
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#36
07-10-2002, 04:57 PM
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Actually, I try to avoid people like that. I'm sort of amused by the amount of talking I do about Christianity on this Board, when two of my closest friends, and the people I have the best conversations about religion (and other topics with) are a pair of Fundamentalists turned atheists turned Wiccans. We very rarely have to resort to talking about the weather!
 I hope we three can continue to discuss religion. CJ
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#37
07-10-2002, 05:29 PM
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#38
07-12-2002, 06:31 AM
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In response to Morbid's quote:
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Exodus 8:20 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the water and say to him, 'This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. There are other numerous scriptures about worship, but this one pretty much sums it up, because God said it. Worship should be done not out of duty, but because He is worthy.
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#40
07-12-2002, 05:09 PM
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The Bible is the one true authority because it says so right in The Bible?
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#41
07-13-2002, 12:08 PM
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Worship/prayer is the act of expressing thanks to God for all that He has done.
Personally, I worship and pray, not because any god orders me to do so, but because I am overjoyed by the richness of my experience, the people I meet, and other such things. Shoot, who else am I to thank for the beautiful birdsongs I hear on my otherwise dull street?
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#42
07-13-2002, 12:16 PM
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How about the birds?
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