It’s important to agree in prayer. It’s also important to know when not to.
Ever been in this situation?— You’re in a prayer meeting, church small group, or some other Christian function. And whoever’s praying at the moment is saying something you totally don’t agree with. Something you kinda can’t agree with.
Fr’instance someone who uses prayer time to go on long rants about stuff they don’t like, and disguise them as prayers. Sometimes it’s political stuff: “Oh holy Lord, knowest thou those liberals in Washington? Gettest thou them out of the White House!” Sometimes it’s social issues, or pet peeves, or whatever those radio talk show hosts have got ’em riled up about today.
Or it’s bad theology. “Lord, I know you’ll give us what we ask because your word won’t return void,” even though none of what they prayed was his word (and
So at the end of this rant prayer,
But you’re not okay with it.
And y’know, that’s fine. If you object to the prayer, you don’t have to say amen. Say nothing.
And if you object strongly enough—if, start to finish, it was awful, and the exact opposite oughta’ve been prayed—you can even go with the word
But then again you might be in a room full of
Just saying if amen isn’t the appropriate thing to say, don’t say it.
Sometimes your silence will be noted.
Yeah, I’ve been there. I was in prayer meetings where I felt it was wrong to say amen. Weren’t large prayer meetings either; there were just four or five of us, and not saying amen was gonna get noticed.
Which I can live with. Other Christians really can’t.
Sometimes ’cause tradition. After a prayer, we usually say amen, but to these folks, we must say amen. You don’t not say amen. It’s not a proper prayer otherwise: All prayers must begin with “Dear God” or some other formal address to the deity, and end with “In Jesus name amen”—same as formal letters begin with “Dear sir or ma’am” and end with “Yours sincerely.” And if you can pray
Sometimes ’cause they don’t care to make waves. They don’t wanna be the only conscientious objector in the room. They don’t want you to be the only conscientious objector in the room either. They don’t want the petitioner, the prayer leader, the pastors, the church ladies, anyone to take offense. They don’t wanna pick a fight—as they’re worried will happen in a worst-case scenario. Say amen, stifle your own views, and let that be that.
Sometimes they’re the person who prayed that nasty prayer, and they demand everyone agree with them. It’s their
Obviously none of these are good rationales.
If we can’t sign off on a prayer—if our consciences won’t permit it—it’s actually sin if we cave to peer pressure and say amen anyway. Our consciences may be defective, but the Holy Spirit nonetheless uses them to point us the right way.
Regardless, don’t capitulate and say amen when you don’t mean it. It’s not a complicated idea: It’s what Jesus himself taught. Let your yes be yes, your no be no,
Just make sure it doesn’t come from an evil place.
But back to the idea that we could be wrong.
There are Christians who rarely say amen. They’ve taken it upon themselves to nitpick every prayer for quality, authenticity, and orthodoxy. If there’s any little thing they don’t like, to them it negates the entire prayer. Some of ’em aren’t okay with praying much of anything but
I’ve been in more than one prayer group where if you pray anything these people differ with, they ask to pray next… and their prayers try to undo or nullify everything you just prayed, and even try to slip into their sermon-prayers a little instruction as to why you’re wrong. Since they’re talking to you, but pretending to talk to God,
The hyper-critical petitioner is a really awful, graceless person to worship with. And sometimes they’re the prayer leaders. You’d better believe they won’t say amen along with your prayers. Only along with their own.
So of course this is a warning lest we start getting that way.
If we find ourselves regularly objecting to every other prayer, we need to step back and ask ourselves whether we’re the problem. Are we being graceless? Too particular about what we consider appropriate prayer material? I mean, God’s okay with us telling him absolutely everything, or asking for all sorts of things. (Read Psalms again if you don’t believe me.) Prayer’s an infinitely flexible practice. Let’s not be the inflexible ones.
Yeah, if people are exhibiting bad Christian behavior, if they’re fruitless and nasty, by all means skip the amens. Don’t encourage the bad behavior. But don’t try to mold people into “proper” prayer behavior, whatever you imagine that to be. If they’re exhibiting
Hopefully it’ll be rare you have to sit out an amen. Even rarer you have to declare an anathema.
