The Unity of the Church - A Pious Clich

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 30 July 2003 2 Comments
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Question

Can you help me on the subject of prayer? Is God a real person with whom I can communicate?

Answer

Prayer is a complex issue and we will not solve it in a question and answer column. I have written whole books on the subject (Honest Prayer, published originally by Seabury Press in 1979 and now out of print but reprinted in small quantities periodically by St. Johan's Publishing Company in Bergenfield, New Jersey) and chapters in other books on it, the most recent being two chapters in my latest book, A New Christianity for a New World.

The problem with prayer is that you cannot address the real issue until the distortions are rooted out. One of the distortions is reflected in your question. Is God a "real person," as you might imply? Surely that is to create God in a human image. "But," people protest, "if God is not personal, God has no value for me!" But does God exist to give us value? Those are the questions where the quest for the meaning of prayer must begin.

Then we need to look at the content of our prayers and ask other questions.

Does prayer cause God to do what God might not do if we did not pray?

Does prayer change God's mind?

Do many prayers from many people do more good than the individual prayers of a lone person?

Is prayer the way we get God to do our will?

So often the prayers people talk about sound to me like adult letters to Santa Claus. "Dear God, I have been a good boy or girl, so please do a, b, c, and d for me." Surely prayer must be more than this!

It is!

Prayer is sitting self-consciously in the presence of God until that presence is part of who you are.

Prayer is entering into the life of another and enabling the God present in you to enhance the life of another.

Prayer is filling the world and especially those you love with the power of your own positive energy. Your life force which may well be part of who or what God is.

Prayer is the action you take to allow life to be expanded, love to be increased, being to be enhanced.

Prayer is facing who you are with non-illusory honesty.

Prayer is communing with the God who is beyond all of our images of God, including the image of human personhood.

Prayer is a power that opens the world to the reality of the God who has infused that world with the qualities that are surely part of who God is - life, love and being.

These comments are only a start but every journey has to begin with a single step.

I invite you to bring your questions to one of our chat rooms and to work with fellow pilgrims on this problem. It might be worth your while.

John Shelby Spong

 

 

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