Some denominations and section of denominations don’t encourage that kind of thing some do. That could be a reason for the differences. I believe we as human beings have a level of understanding that goes beyond our senses. All people Christian or not. God can work in this area as much as any other.
I don't agree. I know Christians who are strongly moral people, very practical and down-to-earth, very good and kind and focused on following Christ's teaching, who simply don't experience this, despite other Christians in their church or community experiencing it. I do find the people who speak out about not experiencing it are the ones who are not afraid to be honest and open, and are secure enough in themselves and their faith to be able to admit it - because it can be used against people, to suggest they aren't good/strong enough Christians. I also suspect, from my observations in some churches, that some people fake it, or convince themselves that their emotions are a spiritual awareness, because they don't want to be seen as spiritually inferior. There can be a lot of pressure about such things.
I never said that people who don’t have the “Sixth Sense,” I really didn’t want to use that phrase but could not think of another, are not strong Christians. I was very careful in picking my words. I said that some denominations or sections of denominations do not encourage it and that is a reason not the reason. Just one reason among several. I am open and honest about it. It is not as though it happens every week. There are times when it is just as you pointed out. Getting on with the job of being a Christian. I have also experienced the opposite. Some members of none charismatic churches wouldn’t br seem with some of my church because of this. They did not believe it happened and anyone who did was deluded st best.
Your experience is your experience and I am sorry you didn’t want to stay in that Church.
My experiences are mine and seem at odds with a lot of experiences on here. The Church is a complicated place
To clarify, I did read your wording and I'm aware you didn't call it a sixth sense, but an understanding that goes beyond our senses. I was responding to your words. I'm not sure what you're arguing with me about. Is it possible this was intended for a different person? It was KarlLB, not me, who spoke of a sixth sense and leaving a church.
By starting with the words Disagree with you, you seemed to be saying I said only those who seem to have the Sixth Sense are moral and good Christians. I did not. You went on to say that those who say that they din’t are brave. I was pointing out that I did not say that only those who seem to have it are the only good and moral Christians and that those who do use it are also being brave and have also had a hard time for saying they sense God.
Hope that clears it up.
Okay. I was disagreeing with this: 'I believe we as human beings have a level of understanding that goes beyond our senses.'
I understood you were saying it wasn't just Christians but a human thing, but I was also speaking from the context of you starting your comment by saying people may be influenced by whether their churches encourage it, so I was talking specifically about Christians and churches. I was describing aspects of the Christian behaviour and approach to life someone may have, and the fact that their churches may encourage what you are now calling a sixth sense, but if they don't experience it, speaking out about this can be difficult. It may indeed require some bravery, though I didn't use the word brave - I said 'not afraid,' which is to me a different thing. Bravery is when you are afraid but do it anyway, and I'm sure that also applies to many.
I hope that clarifies. I think the only area we are disagreeing on is whether all humans have this spiritual sense.
You said you were sorry I didn't want to stay in my church. As I said nothing about my church, but KarlLB spoke about leaving his church, am I correct in assuming that part was meant for him, or did I say something that made it sound like I wanted to leave a church?
That’s a bit of a vague question, SusanDoris, and I’m not quite sure what sort of thing you’re talking about. In the way in communication, do you mean, where different people have different assumptions?
/re-reading the post I see that, yes, it is vague. I will try to think of a specific example.
Seriously @caroline444, people like me need people like you to carry on believing what you do, despite people like us! For me there is no wriggle room at all, lying hypocrite that I am: there being no rationalists in foxholes.
Thank your for that, although I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself!
I've been in Christian service for 30 odd years now, and the one thing we could never do without is prayer. Petitionary prayer. Whether that's for psychological stuff (strength, wisdom, etc.) or for the crassest physical needs (O God, help me find a nurse to put a catheter into this guy STAT).
I don't give a damn what the philosophical arguments are against it, petitionary prayer is a good thing. And every missionary I know gloms on to people who pray with both hands and both feet. (You should see the little envious sparks that light up in their eyes when one of them mentions a person who prays faithfully for them. It's actually rather hilarious.)
So if you are elderly or disabled or housebound or whatever it may be that debars you from what we foolishly call more active forms of service, prayer is NOT second best. Sometimes I wonder if it's the only best.
And if you'd like to pray for me and mine, we'd be grateful.
I got so much from reading this Lamb Chopped. Thank you ...
I don't want to misrepresent myself, I can *do* stuff, and I do *do* stuff, but my capacity for doing, compared to a lot of people, is limited. I find it helpful to pray, and to pray for other people as well, even if it just means holding them in my thoughts. I found it extremely helpful to read what you had to say about petitionary prayer - thank you so much.
I've only very recently started exploring the idea of Christianity.
Could you please say briefly what you mean by this? Are you exploring from another faith belief, or from non-belief for instance?
Thirty years ago I attended Quakers, but with a non-Christian mindset - just working with the idea of a caring higher power, (basically God = Good.) Then for 20 years I was a atheist. Then earlier this year I moved to a different city, and started attending Quakers again, this time very much as a seeker wanting some sort of spiritual life or belief system. I looked vaguely at Buddhism (which is what most of my friends follow), but to my surprise found myself much more drawn to Christianity. Even more surprising, I find that I get a lot from attending the service for morning prayers at the local cathedral, which is very conservative, but I nevertheless find it very moving. I always presumed that if I were to become a Christian I would veer towards very liberal ideas - I have been reading people like Richard Holloway, Marcus J. Borg and John Selby Spong...but in spite of that, I find myself quite drawn to more traditional Christian ideas. I will continue to attend Quakers too, where I still feel very much at home. Sorry this is such a mish-mash. At this stage my ideas are still pretty muddled!
I've been in Christian service for 30 odd years now, and the one thing we could never do without is prayer. Petitionary prayer. Whether that's for psychological stuff (strength, wisdom, etc.) or for the crassest physical needs (O God, help me find a nurse to put a catheter into this guy STAT).
I don't give a damn what the philosophical arguments are against it, petitionary prayer is a good thing. And every missionary I know gloms on to people who pray with both hands and both feet. (You should see the little envious sparks that light up in their eyes when one of them mentions a person who prays faithfully for them. It's actually rather hilarious.)
So if you are elderly or disabled or housebound or whatever it may be that debars you from what we foolishly call more active forms of service, prayer is NOT second best. Sometimes I wonder if it's the only best.
And if you'd like to pray for me and mine, we'd be grateful.
Amen* I completely agree. Forgive me if I argue otherwise Purgatorily!
*& I know we're both the better for that: I liked.
For about 3 years I attended Quakers, on a very simple basis. I worked with the idea of a caring higher power who did not intervene in the world, but who nevertheless cared.
Then I became an atheist, & was an atheist for 20 years.
This year I moved to a different city, and I felt quite a strong desire to have a spiritual life and perspective. I began attending Quakers again, and have also been going to the local cathedral service for morning prayers. I have been reading several books on progressive Christianity, which I thought would be my natural home.... but to my great surprise find myself quite drawn to more traditional ideas. I am still very much just a curious explorer, with a whole mish-mash of ideas.
You know the answer. Never do I hear a public prayer that acknowledges the fact that God cannot intervene, ever, except ineffably 'by the Spirit', yearning passively, immanently alongside us, in us for us to be His hands, feet, ears, voices and wallets.
Whilst I would agree with you here, I often pray that people may be given strength, patience or tenacity to help them cope with what they are going through. It's as though whilst I believe God isn't got to intercede in any sort of physical way, he is able to affect people's mental well-being. This may be irrational - I don't know.
We've all done it. And no He isn't. Because He doesn't. The psychological is the physical. It's all down to us.
And yet Jesus taught to petition God for things. “Give us today our daily bread.” If it were as simple as you are making it out we wouldn’t be having these conversations. Restricting an all powerful God by saying it is all down to us is illogical. It cannot happen he is all powerful. So there must be another reason. What that is may vary, we cannot know for sure.
I have only heard of the type of thing some people are reporting here. God not answering your petition prayer how you want has not lead to anyone being told that it is their fault in my experience. We cannot know the mind of God. If we assume he wants the best for us then no or wait may be appropriate answers. Petition prayer is only part of the whole. If prayer is defined as communicating or talking with God then there is a deeper relationship than just asking. That is however part of it.
Very occasionally you will meet someone who is prayerful and spends so much time in prayer, encountering God that it radiates from them. Then there will be others who are on that journey. Amazing people to encounter. Encounters with those people strongly suggest an external God to pray to: they have a different aspect to those who meditate.
@SusanDoris I am getting the impression from this thread that you started it in the hope of convincing others of your belief in the lack of efficacy of prayer as, as you have stated previously, there is no evidence of miracles being performed. However there is a lot of research demonstrating the benefits of a religion on people's well-being: I would suggest to you that those benefits are an outworking of regular prayer.
I've never met such a person. How does it show? Does it work the other way? And yes, religion benefits the religious.
I've just had a whole stack of what I typed cut off. Is there anyway of knowing when we are coming to the end of our comment allowence?
I don’t think you will have reached a limit (if there is one). I think something else happened. I know that sometimes if I’ve gone away from a page with a comment, and then come back to it some of the later part has been lost. Eventually I may learn to click ‘Save Draft’ before leaving.
I don’t think you will have reached a limit (if there is one). I think something else happened. I know that sometimes if I’ve gone away from a page with a comment, and then come back to it some of the later part has been lost. Eventually I may learn to click ‘Save Draft’ before leaving.
Thank you! I shall look out for that "save draft" tab...
@Curiosity killed how did you know? How can one tell the difference? What is a glow of prayer from encounter with God? I can't parse that. A glow from encounter with God in prayer? How does one encounter God in prayer?
A medieval monk who believed the world was flat could probably nevertheless teach us a thing or two about prayer.
Could you expand on that a bit, please?
It's a fairly straightforward observation. Medieval monastics spent a lot of time praying, so one might expect them to be able to teach us something about it.
Ok, some of it will have been fairly mechanical repetition with the aim of getting souls out of Purgatory, but there you go. It is sometimes said that prayer is as much as developing a prayerful attitude as anything else.
The point I was trying to make is that we have to turn to the practitioners if we want to understand something more fully. An air line pilot could tells us more about flight, a miner about mining, a lawyer about law, a preacher about preaching, a neuroscientist about neuroscience.
The fact that a medieval monk wouldn't be able to tell us anything about neuroscience, manned flight, mining engineering or family law, doesn't mean he couldn't tell us anything about prayer or brewing mead or illuminating manuscripts or bee keeping.
@Curiosity killed how did you know? How can one tell the difference? What is a glow of prayer from encounter with God? I can't parse that. A glow from encounter with God in prayer? How does one encounter God in prayer?
What if God isn't? What is one encountering? What if He is but doesn't encounter back?
For about 3 years I attended Quakers, on a very simple basis. I worked with the idea of a caring higher power who did not intervene in the world, but who nevertheless cared.
Then I became an atheist, & was an atheist for 20 years.
This year I moved to a different city, and I felt quite a strong desire to have a spiritual life and perspective. I began attending Quakers again, and have also been going to the local cathedral service for morning prayers. I have been reading several books on progressive Christianity, which I thought would be my natural home.... but to my great surprise find myself quite drawn to more traditional ideas. I am still very much just a curious explorer, with a whole mish-mash of ideas.
Thank you - that is interesting. You talk of the desire to have a 'spiritual life' which seems to indicate that you feel the word 'spiritual' applies to religious belief. As you might have noticed here and there, I challenge this point of view!! May I ask, therefore, whether you felt you were spiritual while an atheist?
A medieval monk who believed the world was flat could probably nevertheless teach us a thing or two about prayer.
Could you expand on that a bit, please?
It's a fairly straightforward observation. Medieval monastics spent a lot of time praying, so one might expect them to be able to teach us something about it.
About the words they thought were appropriate, and the tone to use, whether aloud or silently, etc, but if asked about the effectiveness of it, their replies would be based entirely on faith; also, of course, on the faith of the people who believed such prayers were effective.
Ok, some of it will have been fairly mechanical repetition with the aim of getting souls out of Purgatory, but there you go. It is sometimes said that prayer is as much as developing a prayerful attitude as anything else.
The point I was trying to make is that we have to turn to the practitioners if we want to understand something more fully. An air line pilot could tells us more about flight, a miner about mining, a lawyer about law, a preacher about preaching, a neuroscientist about neuroscience.
The fact that a medieval monk wouldn't be able to tell us anything about neuroscience, manned flight, mining engineering or family law, doesn't mean he couldn't tell us anything about prayer or brewing mead or illuminating manuscripts or bee keeping.
Yes, I agree of course. Nowadays though, I wonder whether becoming a monk is more of a choice of life style and is most definitely not central to most people’s lives. I wonder how they would explain how their prayers and routines are effective in improving the world somehow?
The history of illuminated manuscripts and bee-keeping is most interesting and thanks to them for the fact that we can still now see the beautiful art work.
In this context spiritual can only be understood through faith. They are praying to God after all.
An atheist idea of spiritual and spirit is less clear. Often people talk about the human spirit or a spirit of adventure. That indicates an ability to push through adversity.
Then there is spiritual in the sense of deep feelings and reactions, maybe to a painting or piece of music. Something that moves you.
OK @Martin54 - what you see in people who have been praying quietly with trust for years, a peacefulness and serenity. And that is borne out by this research paper from 2013
A considerable number of studies have focused on the relationship between prayer, health, and well-being. But the influence of some types of prayer (e.g., petitionary prayer) has received more attention than others. The purpose of this study is to examine an overlooked aspect of prayer: trust-based prayer beliefs. People with this orientation believe that God knows that best way to answer a prayer and He selects the best time to provide an answer. Three main findings emerge from data that were provided by a nationwide longitudinal survey of older people reveals. First, the results reveal that Conservative Protestants are more likely to endorse trust-based prayer beliefs. Second, the findings suggest that these prayer beliefs tend to be reinforced through prayer groups and informal support from fellow church members. <snip> Third, the data indicate that stronger trust-based prayer beliefs are associated with a greater sense of life satisfaction over time.
This 2012 Huffington Post article discusses the evidence that time spent in prayer and meditation gives health benefits, including reduced blood pressure, and this 2017 study (pdf) compared prayer to meditation and found that meditation did not demonstrate the same benefits.
Amen. I do not doubt the rational, empirical benefits of prayer. I experience them of course. Those I pray with do. Those I pray for are more problematic, because the only way my prayer can benefit them is if it positively affects my behaviour toward them, which covers my telling them if that's going to be of help. You just were. The key is gratitude. 'P', mentioned above or on another thread, comes to mind every day in her infinite desperate unhelpable needs, which I pray to keep in mind to find an impossible way ahead. Being irrationally marginally positive about that benefits me more of course.
Unless you or anyone else here knows what to do for her?
I've been to the hairdresser's and, sitting under the dryer, I have been thinking about this topic. I wonder how much belief there is that prayer itself has power. that is something I myself do not accept, as, since it is people who think and say the prayers, it is they who have power. I am not in this context talking about controlling power, just the strength/ability/etc to take action maybe.
The vast majority of the religious, the vast majority of humankind and always will be, believe prayer bends supernatural power in its favour. That's how we're wired. Even rationalist Christians like me do in irrational moments. Otherwise it's done cognitively.
Even if you believe in a powerful deity who might somehow intervene, there is still something inherently problematic about prayer. If God wants to heal someone, for example, why do I need to pray for them? Won’t he just do it anyway? And if he does not want to heal them, then what difference will my prayer make? And where does justice fit in? What about the people who don’t have anyone to pray for them?
I don’t pretend I can resolve those questions - not even to my own satisfaction. My angle on it is that Jesus teaches that God delights to give good things to us, as a parent does to a child, and that it is right to be persistent in asking. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the most basic of requests, ‘give us today our daily bread’.
I pray, therefore, not because I know how it works, but because I believe in a God who loves us, and who has asked us to ask.
In this context spiritual can only be understood through faith. They are praying to God after all.
An atheist idea of spiritual and spirit is less clear. Often people talk about the human spirit or a spirit of adventure. That indicates an ability to push through adversity.
Then there is spiritual in the sense of deep feelings and reactions, maybe to a painting or piece of music. Something that moves you.
There is plenty of psychological work on the idea of an internal reconciliation between different parts of the psyche. In fact, Jung's idea of the Self, as a kind of upper storey in the mind, seems quite god-like. In fact, if you address the Self, and develop a relationship, it's unclear how this is different from prayer. Jung also argued that it bestows numinous and transcendent qualities to experience. So here is a secular or even atheist god, if anyone actually wants one, I'm not sure why they would. But I think Jung would argue that it is thrust upon you, beyond one's will.
Even if you believe in a powerful deity who might somehow intervene, there is still something inherently problematic about prayer. If God wants to heal someone, for example, why do I need to pray for them? Won’t he just do it anyway? And if he does not want to heal them, then what difference will my prayer make? And where does justice fit in? What about the people who don’t have anyone to pray for them?
And yet, prayer is still central to your life.
I don’t pretend I can resolve those questions - not even to my own satisfaction.
May I ask how impartial you feel you can be, i.e. to what extent do you feel you can consider the questions impartially?
My angle on it is that Jesus teaches that God delights to give good things to us, as a parent does to a child, and that it is right to be persistent in asking. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the most basic of requests, ‘give us today our daily bread’.
And yet we are well aware of how all our food gets to us. I note you use the present tense ‘Jesus teaches’, hmmm, many assumptions there I think.
I pray, therefore, not because I know how it works, but because I believe in a God who loves us, and who has asked us to ask.
Prayer is not in and of itself a power, anymore than faith or trust are powers apart from what you trust in. Everything depends on the one receiving that prayer (or trust). One could pray to the cookie jar, but the cookie jar will not hear or answer. Such a prayer is a waste of time. The point of prayer is to speak with someone who will hear and will (hopefully) answer, as he chooses.
As for "why pray when God knows already?" Lewis suggested that God did it to give us the dignity of causality--that we and our prayers would have a hand in running the world. If so, it's rather like the reason I used to ask my young son what he wanted for dinner, or what movie we should see. It allowed him to exercise his power and take delight in that, and I got the joy of watching him do so.
Re speaking of Jesus in the present tense: of course there are assumptions behind that--the assumption that he is risen from the dead and lives forever being the main one. Speaking of him in the past tense could have other assumptions behind that. Nothing comes without assumptions. You have to choose the assumptions you think are true.
And yet we are well aware of how all our food gets to us.
As were the people to whom Jesus was speaking. In fact, they probably understood it better than many people today given, when far too many people think food comes from the grocery store.
They also understood, as do we, that there are things that affect food production, such as weather, that we cannot control.
Lastly, they understood that “daily bread” just might be a metaphor that refers to more than food.
I note you use the present tense ‘Jesus teaches’, hmmm, many assumptions there I think.
Of course there’s an assumption there. Surely that such an assumption is there from someone who identifies as Christian doesn’t come as a surprise to you.
Prayer is not in and of itself a power, anymore than faith or trust are powers apart from what you trust in. Everything depends on the one receiving that prayer (or trust). One could pray to the cookie jar, but the cookie jar will not hear or answer. Such a prayer is a waste of time. The point of prayer is to speak with someone who will hear and will (hopefully) answer, as he chooses.
As so often happens when I read your posts, this one has made me stop and think! In what do I trust? Maybe it's the built-in altruism of human nature, evident in the fact that the human race survives successfully, perhaps too successfuly. Maybe it's the knowledge that there is nothing or no-one perfect; and maybe it is the optimism of parents. When I go to swimming on a Monday afternoon, there are many parents bringing in children for activities, chatting skipping, bouncing future members of society who will, most of them, contribute to it in useful ways.
Re speaking of Jesus in the present tense: of course there are assumptions behind that--the assumption that he is risen from the dead and lives forever being the main one. Speaking of him in the past tense could have other assumptions behind that. Nothing comes without assumptions. You have to choose the assumptions you think are true.
Yes, I was rather stating the obvious, I'm afraid!
Even if you believe in a powerful deity who might somehow intervene, there is still something inherently problematic about prayer. If God wants to heal someone, for example, why do I need to pray for them? Won’t he just do it anyway? And if he does not want to heal them, then what difference will my prayer make? And where does justice fit in? What about the people who don’t have anyone to pray for them?
And yet, prayer is still central to your life.
Yes. Just because I pray doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the complexities and contradictions; and just because I’m aware of the complexities and contradictions doesn’t mean I don’t pray.
I don’t pretend I can resolve those questions - not even to my own satisfaction.
May I ask how impartial you feel you can be, i.e. to what extent do you feel you can consider the questions impartially?
I’m not sure what meaning any feeling of impartiality or otherwise would have. I could feel fully impartial and be wrong about it, or I could feel anxious that my judgement might be biased and because of that be fairer than I realised. My impartiality needs to be assessed on some other basis than my feelings about it.
My angle on it is that Jesus teaches that God delights to give good things to us, as a parent does to a child, and that it is right to be persistent in asking. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the most basic of requests, ‘give us today our daily bread’.
And yet we are well aware of how all our food gets to us.
Indeed. An understanding of biology, agriculture, food chains, supply chains, markets etc. doesn’t logically or rationally exclude the idea of a God who has created and sustains the world/ environment/ universe we live in.
I note you use the present tense ‘Jesus teaches’, hmmm, many assumptions there I think.
Chiefly, in this case, your assumption that my usage was anything other than a standard historic present. I might equally have said, in another context, ‘Aristotle teaches us…’, or ‘The First World War teaches us…’. That said, I do believe in Jesus Christ as a living, personal being.
I pray, therefore, not because I know how it works, but because I believe in a God who loves us, and who has asked us to ask.
Yes, that is clearly a widely held belief.
I wouldn’t want to exclude other aspects of prayer that have been mentioned. Properly it is also about seeking to attend to, to ‘listen’ to, God. Prayer is also about me being transformed, not simply some quasi-magical attempt to bend the world to my will.
This poem by C.S. Lewis captures, to my mind some of the relational complexities of Christian prayer.
Thank you - that is interesting. You talk of the desire to have a 'spiritual life' which seems to indicate that you feel the word 'spiritual' applies to religious belief. As you might have noticed here and there, I challenge this point of view!! May I ask, therefore, whether you felt you were spiritual while an atheist?
I used the word 'spiritual' very casually - really just as a buzz word, not even meaning a relationship with a higher power as such (in my initial explorings I was also vaguely looking at Buddhism and meditation.) After a while I realised that I did want a relationship with someone I could regard as a loving higher power, and started looking at Christianity.
I've always (like most people) had a capacity for wonder and sense of the sublime, and I didn't lose that when I was an atheist....so maybe within your vocabulary of emotions that would describe me as having been a spiritual atheist?
Yes. Just because I pray doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the complexities and contradictions; and just because I’m aware of the complexities and contradictions doesn’t mean I don’t pray.
Even if you believe in a powerful deity who might somehow intervene, there is still something inherently problematic about prayer. If God wants to heal someone, for example, why do I need to pray for them? Won’t he just do it anyway? And if he does not want to heal them, then what difference will my prayer make? And where does justice fit in? What about the people who don’t have anyone to pray for them?
I don’t pretend I can resolve those questions - not even to my own satisfaction. My angle on it is that Jesus teaches that God delights to give good things to us, as a parent does to a child, and that it is right to be persistent in asking. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the most basic of requests, ‘give us today our daily bread’.
I pray, therefore, not because I know how it works, but because I believe in a God who loves us, and who has asked us to ask.
I believe in an unimaginably, literally unbelievably powerful deity who somehow - ineffably - intervenes, by the Spirit, to our spirit and otherwise absolutely does not. Ever (bar the Once). I bank on it. It's entirely down to me. So I don't have that problem with prayer. I have others now! He obviously doesn't want to heal anyone or not, one way or the other. Justice is entirely up to us. This raises questions about the nature of God which are not satisfactory to us. Tough.
And aye Jesus taught us as you said. And it doesn't mean anything material. It doesn't translate to that now and for nineteen and a half centuries. And yes we need to ask nonetheless, as childishly and as childlikely as we do. His provision is in the asking.
Prayer is not in and of itself a power, anymore than faith or trust are powers apart from what you trust in. Everything depends on the one receiving that prayer (or trust). One could pray to the cookie jar, but the cookie jar will not hear or answer. Such a prayer is a waste of time. The point of prayer is to speak with someone who will hear and will (hopefully) answer, as he chooses.
As for "why pray when God knows already?" Lewis suggested that God did it to give us the dignity of causality--that we and our prayers would have a hand in running the world. If so, it's rather like the reason I used to ask my young son what he wanted for dinner, or what movie we should see. It allowed him to exercise his power and take delight in that, and I got the joy of watching him do so.
Re speaking of Jesus in the present tense: of course there are assumptions behind that--the assumption that he is risen from the dead and lives forever being the main one. Speaking of him in the past tense could have other assumptions behind that. Nothing comes without assumptions. You have to choose the assumptions you think are true.
If God is the cookie jar, and for all intents and purposes He is as He never answers with material effect, prayer is still far from a waste of time.
Seriously @caroline444, people like me need people like you to carry on believing what you do, despite people like us! For me there is no wriggle room at all, lying hypocrite that I am: there being no rationalists in foxholes.
Thank your for that, although I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself!
You're welcome and better that than too soft. I need you not just to believe for me but continue praying in your constraints, including for me, as I… have for you.
Couldn’t get Martin’s quote to work for some reason. Didn’t Jesus say to come to him like a little child?
I didn't quote anything, but here we are:
Matthew 18:2-4 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Mark 10:14-15 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
How this can be made to mean anything about praying for divine intervention in the material world, the suspension of the laws of Provision, is down to our storifying.
I disagree. Part of the “lowliness” or humility of children is precisely their need to ask for stuff in order to stay alive. Small children don’t have the faintest idea of self-sufficiency. The only way their wants get met is by adults looking after them, and this involves asking for what they need. There’s no self-effacing thought of not being worthy to ask.
Even very tiny non-verbal children have ways of asking for stuff that their parents understand. You learn to interpret different cries as “I’m hungry”, “I have a dirty nappy”, “I’m lonely” and so on.
Couldn’t get Martin’s quote to work for some reason. Didn’t Jesus say to come to him like a little child?
I didn't quote anything, but here we are:
Matthew 18:2-4 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Mark 10:14-15 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
How this can be made to mean anything about praying for divine intervention in the material world, the suspension of the laws of Provision, is down to our storifying.
Sorry I wanted to quote you and I couldn’t get it to work properly.
My answer to your question is pretty much covered by La Vie En Rouge
On a different note, one could say that for an adult to believe, or behave, or accept without question words told to them could be interpreted as being somewhat, or more than a little, naive, even gullible.
There seems to me to be a general awareness that prayers are not nowadays considered to have the same power as they probably were in the not so distant past ...
Is there, I wonder, a general acceptance that the 'role' of God has altered, or that prayers must be updated somehow?
Yes, I think there is.
Yes, and Yes. But I don’t think this perception is correct..
This has been a most interesting thread. I think that ‘simplicity’is a key word in thinking about the process of prayer, but I have not given the process much thought over the years. This is, I think, because my becoming a Christian in the first place was as a result of a series of coincidences which I can best describe as a miracle. My Christian life has since been ‘a walk with the Lord’ which involves talking to him, listening to him, and accepting Him.
As an historian rather than a theologian I struggle with the historicity of the Scriptures. Part of my problem is not so much with the Scriptures, but with what our society has done with them. Theologians tend to be relentlessly analytical. For example when I encountered theology at university in the 1960’s many theologians had apparently ‘analysed’ the Gospels out of their now generally accepted origins in the 1st Century. If you add this to the inbuilt prejudice of people concerning the past - that people who did not have digital watches must have been stupid (!) - you consign the Old Testament for instance to irrelevance. My sense that something remarkable actually happened over the last few thousands of years was restored, oddly enough, by reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s History of Christianity.
In my view there is indeed an apparent lack of power in prayer compared with the past. But in Scripture there are many indications our sense of what is possible in prayer may need totally recalibrating: ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.’ John 4 v.12.
On a different note, one could say that for an adult to believe, or behave, or accept without question words told to them could be interpreted as being somewhat, or more than a little, naive, even gullible.
But you then have to balance that with Paul saying that when he became a man he put away childish things. Trusting God with the simplicity a child does is not leaving your brain behind. Our understanding is still important. The simile used by Jesus is a simile not absolutely literal
I disagree. Part of the “lowliness” or humility of children is precisely their need to ask for stuff in order to stay alive. Small children don’t have the faintest idea of self-sufficiency. The only way their wants get met is by adults looking after them, and this involves asking for what they need. There’s no self-effacing thought of not being worthy to ask.
Even very tiny non-verbal children have ways of asking for stuff that their parents understand. You learn to interpret different cries as “I’m hungry”, “I have a dirty nappy”, “I’m lonely” and so on.
In particular, that by saying we should become like little children, Jesus wasn’t telling to ask for divine intervention in the material world. Little children clamour for their material needs to be met all the time.
A crying baby is asking for spiritual or philosophical enlightenment. It wants not to starve to death. Which is about as “material world” as it gets.
Comments
Okay. I was disagreeing with this: 'I believe we as human beings have a level of understanding that goes beyond our senses.'
I understood you were saying it wasn't just Christians but a human thing, but I was also speaking from the context of you starting your comment by saying people may be influenced by whether their churches encourage it, so I was talking specifically about Christians and churches. I was describing aspects of the Christian behaviour and approach to life someone may have, and the fact that their churches may encourage what you are now calling a sixth sense, but if they don't experience it, speaking out about this can be difficult. It may indeed require some bravery, though I didn't use the word brave - I said 'not afraid,' which is to me a different thing. Bravery is when you are afraid but do it anyway, and I'm sure that also applies to many.
I hope that clarifies. I think the only area we are disagreeing on is whether all humans have this spiritual sense.
You said you were sorry I didn't want to stay in my church. As I said nothing about my church, but KarlLB spoke about leaving his church, am I correct in assuming that part was meant for him, or did I say something that made it sound like I wanted to leave a church?
Thank your for that, although I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself!
I got so much from reading this Lamb Chopped. Thank you ...
I don't want to misrepresent myself, I can *do* stuff, and I do *do* stuff, but my capacity for doing, compared to a lot of people, is limited. I find it helpful to pray, and to pray for other people as well, even if it just means holding them in my thoughts. I found it extremely helpful to read what you had to say about petitionary prayer - thank you so much.
Amen* I completely agree. Forgive me if I argue otherwise Purgatorily!
*& I know we're both the better for that: I liked.
You asked where I was coming from....
For about 3 years I attended Quakers, on a very simple basis. I worked with the idea of a caring higher power who did not intervene in the world, but who nevertheless cared.
Then I became an atheist, & was an atheist for 20 years.
This year I moved to a different city, and I felt quite a strong desire to have a spiritual life and perspective. I began attending Quakers again, and have also been going to the local cathedral service for morning prayers. I have been reading several books on progressive Christianity, which I thought would be my natural home.... but to my great surprise find myself quite drawn to more traditional ideas. I am still very much just a curious explorer, with a whole mish-mash of ideas.
Aye He did. And I do every day.
I've never met such a person. How does it show? Does it work the other way? And yes, religion benefits the religious.
Thank you! I shall look out for that "save draft" tab...
@Martin54 - I have met a few people who have that glow of prayer from encounters with God, not usually those who make a big thing of praying
Thank you - I shall try and make some more enquiries.
It's a fairly straightforward observation. Medieval monastics spent a lot of time praying, so one might expect them to be able to teach us something about it.
Ok, some of it will have been fairly mechanical repetition with the aim of getting souls out of Purgatory, but there you go. It is sometimes said that prayer is as much as developing a prayerful attitude as anything else.
The point I was trying to make is that we have to turn to the practitioners if we want to understand something more fully. An air line pilot could tells us more about flight, a miner about mining, a lawyer about law, a preacher about preaching, a neuroscientist about neuroscience.
The fact that a medieval monk wouldn't be able to tell us anything about neuroscience, manned flight, mining engineering or family law, doesn't mean he couldn't tell us anything about prayer or brewing mead or illuminating manuscripts or bee keeping.
What if God isn't? What is one encountering? What if He is but doesn't encounter back?
About the words they thought were appropriate, and the tone to use, whether aloud or silently, etc, but if asked about the effectiveness of it, their replies would be based entirely on faith; also, of course, on the faith of the people who believed such prayers were effective. Yes, I agree of course. Nowadays though, I wonder whether becoming a monk is more of a choice of life style and is most definitely not central to most people’s lives. I wonder how they would explain how their prayers and routines are effective in improving the world somehow?
The history of illuminated manuscripts and bee-keeping is most interesting and thanks to them for the fact that we can still now see the beautiful art work.
An atheist idea of spiritual and spirit is less clear. Often people talk about the human spirit or a spirit of adventure. That indicates an ability to push through adversity.
Then there is spiritual in the sense of deep feelings and reactions, maybe to a painting or piece of music. Something that moves you.
This 2012 Huffington Post article discusses the evidence that time spent in prayer and meditation gives health benefits, including reduced blood pressure, and this 2017 study (pdf) compared prayer to meditation and found that meditation did not demonstrate the same benefits.
Unless you or anyone else here knows what to do for her?
I don’t pretend I can resolve those questions - not even to my own satisfaction. My angle on it is that Jesus teaches that God delights to give good things to us, as a parent does to a child, and that it is right to be persistent in asking. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the most basic of requests, ‘give us today our daily bread’.
I pray, therefore, not because I know how it works, but because I believe in a God who loves us, and who has asked us to ask.
There is plenty of psychological work on the idea of an internal reconciliation between different parts of the psyche. In fact, Jung's idea of the Self, as a kind of upper storey in the mind, seems quite god-like. In fact, if you address the Self, and develop a relationship, it's unclear how this is different from prayer. Jung also argued that it bestows numinous and transcendent qualities to experience. So here is a secular or even atheist god, if anyone actually wants one, I'm not sure why they would. But I think Jung would argue that it is thrust upon you, beyond one's will.
As for "why pray when God knows already?" Lewis suggested that God did it to give us the dignity of causality--that we and our prayers would have a hand in running the world. If so, it's rather like the reason I used to ask my young son what he wanted for dinner, or what movie we should see. It allowed him to exercise his power and take delight in that, and I got the joy of watching him do so.
Re speaking of Jesus in the present tense: of course there are assumptions behind that--the assumption that he is risen from the dead and lives forever being the main one. Speaking of him in the past tense could have other assumptions behind that. Nothing comes without assumptions. You have to choose the assumptions you think are true.
They also understood, as do we, that there are things that affect food production, such as weather, that we cannot control.
Lastly, they understood that “daily bread” just might be a metaphor that refers to more than food.
Of course there’s an assumption there. Surely that such an assumption is there from someone who identifies as Christian doesn’t come as a surprise to you.
This poem by C.S. Lewis captures, to my mind some of the relational complexities of Christian prayer.
I used the word 'spiritual' very casually - really just as a buzz word, not even meaning a relationship with a higher power as such (in my initial explorings I was also vaguely looking at Buddhism and meditation.) After a while I realised that I did want a relationship with someone I could regard as a loving higher power, and started looking at Christianity.
I've always (like most people) had a capacity for wonder and sense of the sublime, and I didn't lose that when I was an atheist....so maybe within your vocabulary of emotions that would describe me as having been a spiritual atheist?
@BroJames:
Yes. Just because I pray doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the complexities and contradictions; and just because I’m aware of the complexities and contradictions doesn’t mean I don’t pray.
~~~~~
I found this incredibly helpful...thank you.
I believe in an unimaginably, literally unbelievably powerful deity who somehow - ineffably - intervenes, by the Spirit, to our spirit and otherwise absolutely does not. Ever (bar the Once). I bank on it. It's entirely down to me. So I don't have that problem with prayer. I have others now! He obviously doesn't want to heal anyone or not, one way or the other. Justice is entirely up to us. This raises questions about the nature of God which are not satisfactory to us. Tough.
And aye Jesus taught us as you said. And it doesn't mean anything material. It doesn't translate to that now and for nineteen and a half centuries. And yes we need to ask nonetheless, as childishly and as childlikely as we do. His provision is in the asking.
Dad, Dad, why Dad? Dad. Why? Eh Dad?
If God is the cookie jar, and for all intents and purposes He is as He never answers with material effect, prayer is still far from a waste of time.
You're welcome and better that than too soft. I need you not just to believe for me but continue praying in your constraints, including for me, as I… have for you.
I didn't quote anything, but here we are:
Matthew 18:2-4 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Mark 10:14-15 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
How this can be made to mean anything about praying for divine intervention in the material world, the suspension of the laws of Provision, is down to our storifying.
Even very tiny non-verbal children have ways of asking for stuff that their parents understand. You learn to interpret different cries as “I’m hungry”, “I have a dirty nappy”, “I’m lonely” and so on.
My answer to your question is pretty much covered by La Vie En Rouge
Yes, and Yes. But I don’t think this perception is correct..
This has been a most interesting thread. I think that ‘simplicity’is a key word in thinking about the process of prayer, but I have not given the process much thought over the years. This is, I think, because my becoming a Christian in the first place was as a result of a series of coincidences which I can best describe as a miracle. My Christian life has since been ‘a walk with the Lord’ which involves talking to him, listening to him, and accepting Him.
As an historian rather than a theologian I struggle with the historicity of the Scriptures. Part of my problem is not so much with the Scriptures, but with what our society has done with them. Theologians tend to be relentlessly analytical. For example when I encountered theology at university in the 1960’s many theologians had apparently ‘analysed’ the Gospels out of their now generally accepted origins in the 1st Century. If you add this to the inbuilt prejudice of people concerning the past - that people who did not have digital watches must have been stupid (!) - you consign the Old Testament for instance to irrelevance. My sense that something remarkable actually happened over the last few thousands of years was restored, oddly enough, by reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s History of Christianity.
In my view there is indeed an apparent lack of power in prayer compared with the past. But in Scripture there are many indications our sense of what is possible in prayer may need totally recalibrating: ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.’ John 4 v.12.
But you then have to balance that with Paul saying that when he became a man he put away childish things. Trusting God with the simplicity a child does is not leaving your brain behind. Our understanding is still important. The simile used by Jesus is a simile not absolutely literal
With what?
In particular, that by saying we should become like little children, Jesus wasn’t telling to ask for divine intervention in the material world. Little children clamour for their material needs to be met all the time.
A crying baby is asking for spiritual or philosophical enlightenment. It wants not to starve to death. Which is about as “material world” as it gets.