I’ll try to be non offensive here, but I have some honest questions about people who pray. (I have never prayed, so forgive me). When someone says, “You’re in my prayers” or “I’ll pray for you,” do they mean it literally? Or are they just saying “I wish you well?”
When do people pray? All day? How many times per day? (yeah, I’m sure it varies.) For exmple (which started me thinking) when someone hears about little kids being shot at school, do they immediately take a moment and reach out to their god with prayer for the families? Or do they wait until the end of the day (now I lay me down to sleep….)? Do they think god will lessen the grief of the parents as a result of their prayers?
I know of one person, a relative, who seems to pray about anything, and I just sit quietly while she does it, and she does it over meals, while driving, before Drs appts, and carries a rosary with her constantly. I do not see this as a common thing though. Among all the folks that I know, she is the outlier. I, who pray not at all, think this is a waste of time, and can even be dangerous bc if she thinks God is in control of everything, then she might decide to let God, “take the wheel”, as it says in that song. (Or is it Jesus who is supposed to take the wheel?)
There are no logistics when it comes to prayer, outside of those within one’s faith. To an outsider, it’s irrational, in the literal sense of the word (not “stupid”, but there’s no basis in fact or logic).
Back when I was a flight instructor I had a student (who became a friend) that was quite religious. Before every takeoff they would put on pieces of clothing associated with their faith and say a prayer. I used to teasingly ask, “If you do it without the hat / shawl, does it lose potency? Are we more likely to crash without them? Does god disqualify otherwise good prayers due to lack of headgear?”
We knew each other well enough that they understood I was not truly mocking their faith in an unkind way. If it made them feel good to pray before flight, great. But it’s not logical.
The way I see it, God is going to do what’s best, whether I pray for it or not. But God still likes for us to pray, anyway. It’s like when you call your parents every week, whether you have any particular news to share with them or not, because they love you, and you love them, and taking some time to talk is one of the things we do with our loved ones.
When I tell someone I’m going to do something, I do it. Otherwise my word doesn’t mean anything and I can’t be trusted. So yes, I do “mean it literally.”
My biggest problem with prayer is the same as my biggest problem with talking to people (e.g. “call your parents every week”): I suck at talking to people (or God) when I don’t have anything to communicate. How do you know what to say, when you don’t have anything to say?
Prayer to me has to do with engaging the heart in a totally selfless manner of love. While we typically fall short of this we can get close enough at times. That type of selfless love is called agape which is the greek word for selfless love. It is the love that God has for us and that God ‘is’ and is our primary communication method with God. As such acting in selfless love is not only prayer but God himself working through you. Prayers in such a selfless love manner agape are the words of God Himself which can happen through us.
If we ask somebody to pray for us typically it is somebody who cares about us or perhaps cares about the issue that concerns us. This has to do with her heart and who they care for and what they care about so this can be closer to Tru agaves it is engaging their heart in our request to God.
If you have such a heart towards either the person or the issue that they are asking you to pray about that you can feel the agape in the issue or towards the person that is prayer to God
I voted “never,” tho before I thought about it sufficiently in grade school I’m sure I said my fair share of Our Fathers and Holy Marys. And around the family table we’d wave out vague crosses while mumbling, “Blessusolordforthesethygifts…”
I generally assume prayer means something like mediation or good thoughts. Because the idea of an imaginary being granting one’s wishes or providing guidance is flat out nuts.
To quote Penric, in Lois McMaster Bujold’s books, The five purposes of prayer are:
service,
supplication,
gratitude,
divination, and
atonement
Despite that coming from a fantasy series, I think she’s right. I pray a few times a year. As a Jew, most of my prayers are prayers of gratitude and atonement. (Well, that last because I usually pray on Yom Kippur, ya know.)
Are you just asking about prayers of supplication, or other prayers, as well?
When I was a child, the Baptist children I hung out with insisted that when you prayed the audible voice of God would talk back to you just like when the sergeant communicated with the lieutenant on the walkie-talkie in the old war movies. It never worked for me no matter how hard I tried. I eventually gave up.
Basically, Christians pray whenever they feel like it, and it can be 2 seconds or 2 hours, but I think deep down most Christians know their odds of prayer being answered are like winning the powerball.
My mom is a member of a prayer group at her church. They meet once a week (was in person, has been on Zoom the last 5 years) to pray together for the people who have been nominated.
Good thoughts can improve the emotional state of both the thinker or the subject of the thoughts. But other than that, of course wishing does not make something come true.
“Good thoughts” or prayers for someone mostly (only) help if they know people are praying for them. But i think this effect is real. There are a number of studies showing that people who are socially connected, and who know that other people want them to recover, do better. Prayer is an organized way to do this.
I remember my nominally Catholic but not particularly religious dad telling me that after he had his stroke, a cousin asked if she and her prayer group could pray for him. He said “Sure,” figuring “What can it hurt?” But it turned out they came into the hospital and laid their hands on him, beseeching God to heal him - which my dad said felt awfully silly.
Similarly, he said the priest at the hospital seemed like a nice enough guy to talk with. And immediately after his stroke he wondered if he oughtn’t try to play the religious salvation card. But pretty quickly, once it became clear his death was not imminent (he live 12 more years), the idea of praying to be cured seemed nonsense.
I guess I was mostly curious about supplication (I had to look it up though). When someone hears a friend’s mother has cancer, and says “You’ll both be in my prayers,” I was wondering do they pray pretty soon thereafter, or later that day, or Sunday morning? I guess there is no answer, everyone is different.
This was helpful. I understand gratitude and atonement ones the most. I don’t understand asking god to help ease the suffering of parents who lost a child in a school shooting. I doubt god is more or less likely to be nice because I’m praying for it.
Divination means, “praying to understand what God wants you to do”. My guess is that this is often helpful, and sometimes leads to crazy mass murder. But usually helpful, and not fundamentally different from a humanist pausing to contemplate what the moral course of action is.
Service is “God wants me to pray”. Both Jews and Muslims do this a lot. In fact, Jewish doctrine is that after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, God asked us to pray instead of offering physical sacrifices in the Temple.
But to answer your question about when and where people make prayers of supplication, yeah, it varies a great deal. Some people will stop and pray right there and then. Others will add you to their “list”, and pray for you along with the others on their list at their regular prayer service, or when they conduct their regularly scheduled prayers.
