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.
The prayer isn’t for God, it’s for you. Every Christian church believes that prayer serves two purposes.
To enhance your relationship with God.
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.
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.
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.
“I can deliver this infant girl from her molesting, abusive single-parent stepfather, but only if someone else knows what’s going on and convinces me to do so”?
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.
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.
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.
Ahhh, not true. He knows all things about you and if you chose to live in his will, then you believe his will is good and your life is in his hands no matter what your circumstances.
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.
