The Super Committee Fails – Disgust is Rampant!

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 24 November 2011 2 Comments
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Question

I do enjoy all your books.  I’ve just finished Eternal Life and my question is-OK, now how do we pray?  If we “walk into God” and it’s internal, how do we address prayers?  Thanks so much.  You have changed my thinking about theology-and I’ve spent my adult life as a Christian educator.

Answer

Dear Jan,

If you could read the mail this column elicits, you would recognize that your question is the one most frequently asked.  In my public lectures, it is regularly either the first or second question that arises.  I think that is because we define God when we pray without thinking about it.  So when we question how to pray, we are in fact, questioning our definition of God.  This means that any attempt to answer your question must begin with a redefinition of our understanding of God.

Prayer, as we traditionally understand and practice it, assumes a supernatural being who has the power to hear and the ability to respond very much like a human authority figure.  This Supernatural Being can thus intervene in life to fix it and to shape it according to the will of God.  Is that power real or imaginary?  Is it more than a human fantasy?  If God has the power to cure cancer, to stop war, to create a just society, to prevent the Holocaust and does not use that power then God is malevolent.  If God does not have the power to do these things then God is impotent. If both of those options are offensive, perhaps that suggests that our definitions of God are either inaccurate or limited or even that our image of God is modeled after the human experience of authority.  It is not surprising that we speak of God as a parent or a judge able to do things we cannot do or with authority to bless or to punish.

Suppose on the other hand that we try to envision God as the Source of life then we worship God by living fully and we experience God as power flowing through us when we become the source of life to another.

Suppose we conceive of God as the Source of love then we worship God by loving wastefully and we experience God flowing through us when we become the source of love to another.

Suppose we conceive of God as the Ground of Being, then we worship God by having the courage to be all that we can be and we experience God flowing through us when we provide others with the courage to be all that they can be.

If we can entertain that understanding of God then prayer becomes not a petitioner imploring an eternal authority, but an activity in which each of us is deeply involved.  God becomes not an external force invading time and space, but the power of life, love and the sharing of being.  Maturity replaces childishness in worship and we recognize that God is a part of who we are and we are a part of who God is.

These are not new ideas.  They have been around for centuries in the work of the mystics.  What is new is that these ideas are becoming not marginal, but main line.  That is as far as I can go in the space allotted in this question and answer format, but included here are all of the elements to work out a new theology of prayer.

I commend that task to you.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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