An acquaintance in a Christian email list I belong to sent me the following article recently:
Taking offense at prayer? God help us
http://www.trnonline.com/archives/1999archives/09051999/sports/26207.shtml
And I wrote the following reply as an intellectual & religious excercise. Since I am a fairly new Christian and my grasp of the Bible is tenous at best (unlike my grasp of political theory, which is much better :)) I would like to get some criticism (favorable or otherwise, esp from those who know Christian theology & the Bible better than myself) and also hear what others think of the original article:
To begin, I’ll start with where we should all start: the Bible itself.
As Paul writes in I Thessalonians, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give
thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ
Jesus.” (I Thess., 5:17). Mr. Gholson refers to this near the end of his
piece and he is, of course, right. Prayer, joy, and thanking God is an
inherent, and important part of Christianity. We are able to thank God for
His wonderful gifts, be humble before majesty of His creation, ask Him for
strength to overcome trials and to resist temptations, and, of course, to
establish an strong and intimate personal bond with Him.
However, the Bible also says, “And when you pray, do not be like the
hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the
street corners to be seen by men… But when you pray, go into your room,
close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father,
who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew, 6:5).
These two statements seem to be mutually exclusive… The former tells us
we must constantly pray, constantly be joyful, and constantly be humble
before God. The latter, that we must not be like the hypocrites and should
pray in private. These two phrases seem paradoxical… However, if we look
closer we can see that no paradox exists. Just above the last passage, the
very first line of Matthew 6, we read “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of
righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do you will have no
reward from your Father in heaven.” The key phrase here, I think, is “to be
seen by them”. Thus, as usual, everything depends on our intentions, if we
pray publicly to show a facade of piousness to other men, than that is
wrong. Thus, it is possible to pray constantly and publicly, as long is one
is true to the meaning of that prayer. So, Mr. Gholson is right, the Bible
does command us to pray constantly. However, I feel he is missing perhaps
one of the greater lessons that can be found in the Bible.
However, I will save that part, which I feel is the most convincing, for
last. There are some fairly good secular reasons that should make
Christians uncomfortable with government sponsored prayer. To start, Mr.
Gholson misses the main issue at hand. The issue is not that some atheist
was offended by overhearing some Christian praying. Certainly no court
would uphold anyone’s complaint over damages from overhearing prayer.
Certainly it would be only the most insensitive person who would takes
offense at another’s prayer, which as the Bible recognizes, is one of, if
not the most private of religious acts. The issue is not prayer per se, but
prayer that is officially sanctioned (i.e… a public high school football
game) by the government.
First, let me be clear. As a Christian, I fervently believe that
everyone would be better off believing in Christ and feeling the joy and
trust that comes with accepting Him and the Bible. I have no problem with
Church sponsored prayer, private prayer, loud prayer, soft prayer, tearful
prayer, joyful prayer. Missionary work, and converting people to
Christianity, is one of the best ways of serving God. However, I feel that
God wants those who have been converted to fervently believe in Him, to
accept Him with all their hearts, and to give themselves fully to His work.
Thus, for this essential bond of faith to be established, there must be a
bond of trust and goodwill that be established with God. Thus, that bond of
trust and goodwill must be present between those that who are to be
converted and the missionary. People should accept the grace of God the
power of His love and the truth of His Words. They should not be forced
to accept God through deceit, trickery, fear, or… coercion.
Which brings me to secular political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes, in his
Leviathan writes of the State, “The Multitude so united in one Person, is
called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that
great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Morall God to
which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this
Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath
the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror
thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and
mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the Essence
of the Common-wealth; which (to define it) is One Person, of whose Acts a
great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves
every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them
all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence.”
(Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 228). This long and lengthy, (confusing!)
paragraph is saying simply that governments, or states, are simply the
accumulation of the combined force and strength of all the people, into one
body which uses this combined coercive power to enforce the common good.
Governments are primarily tools of force, EVEN liberal democracies like
our own. Anyone who doubts the basis of a governments powers should look
only at last weeks events in Yugoslavia. It was quite clear that Milosevic
was no longer able to use the force of the people, and that force is now in
the hands of his rival, Kostunica.
The Founders of our country knew very well that government was primarily,
if not ONLY, a coercive tool. They feared very much the executive power of
the English King and their first attempt at government tried to establish a
Commonwealth with as little force as possible. This was of course a
failure, and substantially more enforcement powers were given the government
in the Constitution once it was drafted. However, the Founders, many of
them pious men in their own right, were prescient and inserted the
Establishment Clause, forever keeping religion away from the iron-clad fist
of the government.
The Supreme Court has rightfully continued to recognize the importance of
this to individual freedom. In one landmark case on the establishment
clause (this one dealing with prayer at a graduation) Justice Kennedy wrote
for the majority: “What to most believers may seem nothing more than a
reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices,
in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an
attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious
orthodoxy. We need not look beyond the circumstances of this case to see
the phenomenon at work. The undeniable fact is that the school district’s
supervision and control of a high school graduation ceremony places public
pressure, as well as peer pressure, on attending students to stand as a
group or, at least, maintain respectful silence during the Invocation and
Benediction. This pressure, though subtle and indirect, can be as real as
any overt compulsion.” (Lee v Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992)). It is not in
keeping with the freedoms put forward in the Constitution to, no matter how
subtly, invoke the dreadful coercive machinery of the State against a
person, no matter how good the intentions nor how subtle the pressure.
However, to leave the world of secular political philosophy, I believe
using the coercive power of government for public prayer or conversion is
against the teaching of Christianity. The Bible teaches us that we must go
before nonbelievers as servants of God, respectful of the weak, and humble
before Him. Remember, God put Christ on earth, to paraphrase a recent BCF
Friday night talk, “as a weak, little, baby… a poop-factory”. Jesus went
forth, from these humble, humble beginnings, and spread the Word with love,
compassion, and respect for God, and for those he was trying to convert. He
did not try to force anyone to believe in Him or in God, God did not give
Jesus a powerful army to spread His word. He could have. But He didn’t.
God knew that using force to get someone to follow Him surely was the worst
way of bringing the faith to others. Faith through coercion is the easiest
way to generate “believers” who are inwardly bitter and do not truly
believe, who tend to make exaggerated outward displays of faith to
compensate for this distrust. Thus, faith created through force or
political pressure will inevitably result in many hypocrites who will be
publicly pious, yet inwardly not true believers, the very hypocrites decried
in Matthew 6:5. Despite their outward appearance of faith they are not
praying to God, but putting on a show to please secular society, or to
escape its wrath. God knows this, and that is why he placed Jesus on earth
in the manner that he did. God did not create Jesus as the ruler of a
powerful state or army, but instead made him a humble missionary, who, not
coincidentally, had the combined weight of the most powerful state of his
time, against him, and He died for this.
To end this lengthy rant, I’ll leave with words from Paul, from Romans.
Paul taught us to go forward among men in peace, to spread love, and to
treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated. These lessons I feel
are entirely missed by Mr. Gholson, who mocks those who don’t agree with his
faith, judges them, calls them names, and asks them to “Just humor us for 30
seconds. If that’s asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs.
Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer…I don’t
think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world’s
foundations.” (Gholson, article). Consider his words when reading Paul’s
words below:
“Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable
matters. One mans faith allows him to eat everything, but another man,
whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must
not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything
must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him… Therefore,
let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not
to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. As one who is
in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself.
But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If
your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting
in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.
Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the
kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness,
peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this
way is pleasing to God and approved by men.” (Romans 14:1-3, 14:13-18)
To sum up, because of it’s nature as a tool of combined force I think its
wrong that we ask our government to set aside official public time for
prayers. I can find my own time to pray, thank you very much, and I don’t
need the government to tell me when that time is. Neither, do I, as a
Christian, feel comfortable that other Christians want to use that tempting,
and powerful, tool of government to bring moral guidance to others. We
should ourselves humbly go out and spread the Word, and do it on a equal
basis based on love, compassion, and most of all, understanding, not
contempt. This last reason is my main motivation for writing this piece,
and if you got this far, I thank you, when I read Mr. Gholson’s writing, I
was saddened at his condemnation of, judgment of, and mockery of the
feelings of others, just because they didn’t believe in Christ as he does.
Although Mr. Gholson’s heart is in the right place, this type of behavior
will most likely to turn AWAY those who might otherwise have come to be
believers.
Comments appreciated. Again, I apologize beforehand if I’m offending
anyone… this is just my personal take on things, after much introspection.
–M
Mr. Gholson’s article:
http://www.trnonline.com/archives/1999archives/09051999/sports/26207.shtml
Another interesting piece, related:
http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm
Lee v. Weisman (90-1014), 505 U.S. 577 (1992).
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1014.ZO.html