Showing posts with label #Pray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Pray. Show all posts

Coming to God with empty hands. Much as you don’t wanna.

by K.W. Leslie, 16 May 2017

What do we really have to give him, anyway?

God is gracious.

Yeah, you knew this already. (Hope so, anyway.) Problem is, we Christians tend to compartmentalize grace. We imagine it applies to some parts of God; not so much others. It applies to some facets of our Christian life; it really hasn’t sunk in how grace applies to all of it. God’s kingdom runs on grace.

We remember God is gracious when it comes to salvation. He’s gonna save us whether we deserve saving or not. Isn’t this the good news we share with others? But when it comes to prayer, we totally drop the grace idea. We imagine we somehow have to deserve God’s favor before he’ll grant our prayer requests.

Why does this happen? Well, bad examples from fellow Christians. ’Cause for the most part, we’re not living lives of grace. We’re living the way the rest of the world does, and the world runs on reciprocity: If I want something from you, I gotta do something for you first. Quid pro quo, this for that.

So if we wanna get anything out of God, what’re we first gonna give him? And I kid you not: Various Christians actually teach us we need to give God a little something.

Like it goes in Christina Rosetti’s 1872 poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter” (which we sometimes sing at Christmas):

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

So sometimes we’re instructed to give our hearts. Although weren’t we required to do that way back when we said the sinner’s prayer? We gave that already. What else y’got?

Although many of us try to give our hearts all over again. Temporarily, at least. We psyche ourselves into feeling benevolent and holy for a little while; at least till we’re done praying. Then we get distracted by other things, and our hearts are once again our own. As gifts go, our nasty little self-centered hearts make a crummy gift.

But what’s the alternative? Material gifts? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense with an immaterial God. How’re we expected to give God a car, or jewelry, or electronics?—as if he needs such things. Some Christians suggest we give cash to one of his churches. (Particularly those pastors whose budgets are a little tight.) But what if we’d rather not bother with a middleman?

A lot of us figure we’ll give services instead of goods: Do a lot of good deeds. Rack up a bunch of charitable works which God might appreciate. Point to them as our offering.

The Brownies, a Girl Scout group for younger girls, used to give points to kids who committed good deeds. That’s kinda how we imagine our good deeds work with God: We’re accumulating Brownie points. As if we weren’t already meant to do good deeds; Ep 2.10 as if our additional good deeds count as extra credit, and we can stash ’em in God’s karmic bank and maybe make withdrawals in the form of answered prayer requests.

If all this sounds ridiculous, it should. Yet this is what we Christians unconsciously do whenever we go through the motions to merit God’s favor.

I’ll say it again: God is gracious. Do we need to do any of these things? Or are we already in God’s favor because we’re his kids?

Yep, it’s that second thing.

Needlessly long and wild prayers.

by K.W. Leslie, 09 May 2017

As I’ve written previously, ain’t nothing wrong with praying short prayers.

You might remember the Lord’s Prayer is a really short prayer. I mention this to Christians and they respond, “Oh! Yeah, that’s true.” Somehow it hadn’t occurred to them. Obviously Jesus has no problem with us keeping it brief: His example showed is it’s fine with him.

Problem is, we’re not following that example. We’re following a different one—where Jesus went off places and prayed for hours. Seriously, hours. One evening he sent his students off ahead of him and climbed a hill to pray; Mt 14.22-23 by the time he caught up with them (walking across the water, but still), it was “the fourth watch of the night,” Mt 14.25 KJV meaning between 3 and 6 a.m. Even if we generously figure Jesus stopped praying and started walking two hours before the fourth watch began (so, about 1-ish), that meant he was praying from sundown till then. Easily six or seven hours.

There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be able to pray that long. But it needs to come naturally, like it does to Jesus. Can you talk six or seven hours with your best friend, or a beloved family member? Well some of us can. Others of us simply don’t talk that much, to anyone. And yet we all have this screwy idea we’ve gotta engage God in prayer marathons.

No, we’re not ready for six-hour prayers; we’re not Jesus-level prayer experts. But we figure we can at least do six minutes. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except we’re gonna attempt a six-minute prayer with two minutes’ worth of material. Two minutes of praise, thanksgiving, and requests. Followed by four minutes of repetitive, meaningless fluff. Two minutes of authenticity, four minutes of stretching things out. Two minutes of prayer, four minutes of hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy. Who are we trying to impress? God? He didn’t ask us for long prayers. Others? Ourselves? Well, yeah.

Don’t let foreknowledge weird you out about prayer!

by K.W. Leslie, 03 May 2017
FOREKNOW fɔr'noʊ verb. Be aware of an event before it happens.
[Foreknowledge fɔr'nɑl.ədʒ noun.]

God is omnipresent, meaning he exists everywhere in spacetime. There’s no place, nor time, where he’s not. Various Christians incorrectly describe God as outside time, looking down upon it all at once; they got the idea from St. Augustine, who probably got it from Plato of Athens describing his pagan gods. But that’d make God not omnipresent, because he’d be outside the universe, not everywhere within it. So that’d be wrong. Space and time are the same thing anyway: God’s inside time and fills time, same as he does space. He’s here, aware of what’s going on. And 20 years ago, still here, still aware. And 20 years from now, still here, still aware. Simultaneously.

That’s a mind-bending idea to us Christians. Even us Christians who love to watch science fiction TV and movies where they monkey with time travel for fun and adventure. ’Cause we’re time-based creatures: We only experience now, the moving present instant. And even when we’re consciously aware, paying attention to now… we actually aren’t. ’Cause in the split second of time it takes for our senses to take in the world around us, and for our brains to process it, and attach emotions and ideas and values to it… that instant is over. It’s become the past. We’re reacting to a memory. We move through time just that quick.

Whereas God didn’t move. He still sees that moment. Plus every moment we consider “now,” whenever we perceive it: The moment I write this, or the moment you read it. And all the moments before, and all the moments to come. Forever, in both directions.

God knows the future—a phenomenon St. Paul labeled προγινώσκω/proyinósko, “foreknowing,” Ro 8.29, 11.2 ’cause from our human viewpoint the future doesn’t yet exist. Because of God knowing it, a lot of us Christians take a lot of hope, and feel really confident, that everything God says about the future is guaranteed to happen. Jesus is returning. We are getting raised from the dead. All things are gonna be made new. None of this is hypothetical: God’s not making the universe’s greatest-educated guess, or talking about stuff he’s gonna almightily try to achieve. He’s speaking from experience (or to coin a word, foresperience). He foresees it, so he foreknows it. It’s real. Well, fore-real.

Thing is, on the other side of this coin is another phenomenon which I tend to call “predestination angst.” You might already experience it; you just don’t know what to call it.

Paul’s word προορίζω/prohorídzo, “foredecide” (KJV “predestinate”) is where Christians got the idea of predestination—that God hasn’t just foreseen stuff, but fore-decided stuff. Like whether you’re getting into his kingdom or not. God’s not waiting for the future to happen first, nor for you to decide something before he responds to it. Why should an unlimited God need to? He’s acting now. Or he might’ve acted already.

Fr’instance: You’re not sure you’re gonna make your car payment; you pray really hard; you get an unexpected check in the mail which means you can make your car payment. Hallelujah. But when did God start answering your prayer? When you prayed? Well he can’t have: That check had to get printed and mailed, so these events started in motion days ago. Which means God answered today’s prayer days ago. He foreknew your prayer, foredecided what to do about it, and foreacted upon it. Mind bent yet?

True, some Christians only talk about predestination when we’re talking about God choosing our eternal destinations. I’m not talking about that today. I foresee another time for that. (Well, not like God foresees: I’m predicting. He’s seeing.)

But the angst—that feeling of dread or anxiety we can’t put a finger on—comes from our worry that because God foresees, foreknows, and foreacts… exactly why do we need to pray? God already knows what we need before we ask it. Jesus even said so. Mt 6.8 So… do we even need to pray? Hasn’t God already made up his mind? What’s the point?

And so our budding little existentialists sit down and despair, and stop praying.

If that’s what you’re doing, cut it out. Pray.

Sanctus.

by K.W. Leslie, 07 March 2017

A really old, really popular rote prayer.

The name Sanctus comes from the first word of the Latin translation of this prayer.
Musical bonus: A song by a friend of mine, James Thomas La Brie. Big instrumental first part; and of course his version of the Sanctus in the “Hosanna in the Highest” part. YouTube
The first three lines come from Isaiah 6.3, where the serafs are shouting in praise of the LORD; the last three come from Matthew 21.9, where the people shout in praise as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey.

Holy holy holy Lord
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory
Hosanna in the highest
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna in the highest

The form comes from St. John Chrysostom. Earlier English translations, as are found in the Book of Common Prayer, have for the second line, “God of Sabaoth.” The Roman Missal has “God of hosts.” These are all translations of the Hebrew YHWH Chavaót/“LORD of vast numbers,” and Christians have variously translated chavaót as hosts, armies, “power and might,” troops, “angel armies” if you’re gonna make assumptions about what his armies consist of (and why can’t God mobilize his billions of human followers?), or “Sabaoth” if you don’t care to translate it. Me, I tend to go with “LORD of War,” because whenever YHWH Chavaót appears in the bible, the author usually expects God to kick some ass.

Many of these ancient prayers have of course been set to music. That’s the way most Protestants know of them: When I first wrote about the Sanctus years ago, one of the more common responses I got was, “I thought this was a worship song.” Well it is. But first it was a rote prayer. Musicians rediscover rote prayers all the time, and set ’em to music. If they don’t rhyme, chances are they began their existence as a prayer.

And like many a rote prayer, we can use this prayer to help us meditate. You wanna get your mind off the things around you, and concentrate on God? You tap those rote prayers. Repeat them to yourself, focus on the words, focus on the Lord, and praise him.

“Whenever you pray, pray this.”

by K.W. Leslie, 21 February 2017

Luke 11.1-4.

The Lord’s Prayer comes up twice in the gospels: Once in Matthew 6, and here in Luke 11. Today I’m gonna zero in on something Jesus taught about it in Luke. You’ll notice the Luke version is a bit shorter than the Matthew and Didache versions.

Luke 11.1-4 KWL
1 It happened while Jesus was praying in a certain place:
Once he finished, one of his students told him, “Master, teach us to pray,
like John the baptist taught his students.”
2 Jesus told them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father!
Sanctify your name. Bring your kingdom. 3 Give us bread for the day, daily.
4 Forgive us of our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who owes us.
Don’t bring us into tribulation!’”

You’ll also notice when Jesus taught it, he prefaced it with, “When you pray, say…” Lk 11.2 Which brings up the rather important question: Does he expect us to say these words every single time we pray? Or is it optional?

Are we to take Jesus literally, as many a literalistic Christian will insist upon? Or are we gonna follow their example?

’Cause maybe you just realized a whole lot of the very same folks who claim, “We need to believe and follow everything in the bible literally, or we’re not truly bible-believing Christians” in fact don’t pray the Lord’s Prayer every single time they pray. They tend to be much bigger fans of extemporaneous prayer. Rote prayers, even rote prayers from the bible, tend to get treated as dead religion. Even this prayer, which Jesus taught his students personally.

Weren’t they supposed to begin every single one of their off-the-cuff prayers with the Lord’s Prayer? Aren’t we all?

Think about that for a few minutes. I’ll wait.



No, seriously. I’ll be back in the next section.




How to pray the Lord’s Prayer.

by K.W. Leslie, 14 February 2017

When Jesus’s students wanted to learn to pray, he taught them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Wanna know how to pray? Here ya go: Practice with that.

Weirdly enough, in most of the Evangelical churches I’ve been to, when new Christians wanna learn to pray, we don’t always point ’em to the Lord’s Prayer. We point them to our prayer groups.

Why’s this? Well, there’s a weird Evangelical stigma about rote prayer. It’s because a lot of Evangelicals grew up in churches which prayed a lot of pre-written, canned material, and it felt like dead religion to them, and they prefer living religion. So, out went the rote prayers. Their only prayers are spontaneous. Sometimes they won’t even pray biblical rote prayers, like the psalms or Lord’s Prayer.

The down side? The only prayer examples they see aren’t from the bible, but from their fellow Christians. Some of whom don’t even read the bible. All their prayer behavior comes from mimicking other Christians, and after enough decades in an echo chamber of babbling pagan hypocrisy… well, you remember Jesus’s wisecrack about tying a millstone round children’s necks and tossing them in the Mediterranean. Mk 9.42 Better they not pray at all, than pray like some of us hypocrites.

What to do? Well, if our bible studies and prayer groups don’t spend any time talking about how to pray more effectively (meaning like God wants), it’s time to fix those groups. Drop the showing off, ditch the mini-sermons in disguise, quit padding and overcomplicating, and get bold. Talk about what really works, and what really doesn’t. Get honest.

And keep pointing back to the Lord’s Prayer.

Jesus taught this rote prayer. He wants us to recite it. Education in Jesus’s day—same as ours—meant memorization. He wanted his students to put this prayer in their brains. (Since the gospels weren’t written down for another three decades after Jesus taught this, obviously his students did as he wanted!) The Lord’s Prayer is the model for how Jesus wants us to pray, and base our own prayers upon. So if we’re gonna learn to pray properly and effectively, we gotta practice with the Lord’s Prayer.

It’s like training wheels. When people first learn to ride a bicycle, and haven’t yet learned to balance the bike upright all the time, a lot of us use training wheels which always hold the bike upright. The Lord’s Prayer isn’t only training wheels. But it definitely does the job of keeping our prayers upright. When in doubt, return to Jesus’s words.

Intercession: Praying for others… and answering for God.

by K.W. Leslie, 31 January 2017
INTERCESSION /ɪn.(t)ər'sɛs.ʃən/ n. The act of coming between one person and another, on the behalf of one (or both) of the parties.
2. The act of praying on behalf of another.
[Intercessor /'ɪn.(t)ər.sɛs.sər/ n., intercessory /ɪn.(t)ər'sɛs.(sə.)ri/ adj.]

Praying for rulers is one of the many forms of intercession, or the more redundant “intercessory prayer.” It’s when we try to help somebody out, by praying for or with ’em. Sometimes because they asked us to pray for them, but of course they don’t have to: We’re talking with God, they’re on our mind, we bring ’em up.

There are a number of Christians who’ve made intercession their particular ministry. They don’t go out and physically or financially help the needy: They pray for them. Sometimes for legitimate reasons: They can’t physically help, or haven’t the authority, or haven’t the finances. So prayer’s all they can do. True in a whole lot of cases.

Then there’s the illegitimate reason: They do have the means and ability, but they don’t wanna help in any of those other ways. And prayer costs them nothing. So it’s stinginess disguised as piety. Pretend faith, ’cause real faith is expressed by good deeds. Jm 2.14-17 I could go on, but that’d be its own article.

But it brings up another point: Intercession doesn’t begin and end with making other people’s requests known to God. It’s also a prophetic ministry. Y’see, God talks back.

Remember, the usual definition of intercession is when we come between one person and another. In prayer, we come between the person with the request, and the Almighty who can answer the request. You know, like any good priest does. But if we don’t listen for God’s answer—for his solution to the problem—that’s not intercession. What kind of intercessor only listens to one party?

So if you wanna be an intercessor, good for you! But if you think all an intercessor does is make prayer requests, you got another think coming. Intercession usually means you are part of the way God answers prayer.

Praying for rulers.

by K.W. Leslie, 24 January 2017

After we elect a new president, governor, mayor, or whomever, we Christians tend to remind ourselves to pray for our rulers.

Sometimes enthusiastically, ’cause our candidate got elected. And if we’re the really partisan sort, we’ll even rub this fact in other people’s faces. “The patriotic thing to do is to close ranks and back our new leader for the good of the country. So bury that disappointment and pray for your new leader—that’s right, your new leader.” Every so often, the Christian preaching this attempts a sympathetic tone—“Hey, I know it’s rough; I’ve had to do this when your guy won”—but most of the time they’re too happy to care. Or about 12 seconds of the message is sympathy, and the rest is a victory lap. Hey, I’ve been on both sides of it.

And there’s mournfully, ’cause our candidate lost. The candidates have been demonizing one another throughout the election, so when partisans lose they’re convinced the End Times have arrived. Hence the prayers for our rulers aren’t for God to bless them. Not really. They’re for God to mitigate their evil. Keep ’em from ruining our land. Stop ’em from destroying lives. Maybe Jesus could make a Damascus-Road-style appearance and radically transform them into someone who’d vote our way. Wouldn’t that be great?

Sometimes sarcastically; they immediately dive for Psalm 109.

Psalm 109.6-13 KWL
6 Place a wicked person over him, with Satan standing at his right.
7 May those judging him return an evil verdict, and his prayers be offensive.
8 May his days be few, and another ruler supervise him.
9 May his children become fatherless, and his woman a widow.
10 May his children wander, wander, begging, digging through people’s trash.
11 May debt seize everything he owns, and strangers steal his labor.
12 May he never find love; his fatherless children never be given grace.
13 May his generation be the last one, and his family name be wiped out.

Yeah, King David wished some hateful stuff on his enemies. And when people start praying these curses over their rulers, most of the time they’ll stop mid-psalm and say, “Nah; I’m just kidding.” But nah, in their heart of hearts, they aren’t really. Y’ain’t fooling God.

Okay, so where do the scriptures instruct us to pray for our rulers? Well, most of the time we point to Paul’s instructions to Timothy: Paul wanted Timothy and his church to pray for everybody—plus kings and rulers.

1 Timothy 2.1-4 KWL
1 So I encourage everyone to first make thankful, intercessory prayer requests for all the people.
2 Like for kings, and everyone who holds authority.
This way we can go through life in peace and quiet,
applying religion and dignity to all.
3 This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
4 who wants all people to be saved, and come to a knowledge of truth.

Note why: So we Christians can follow Jesus in peace and quiet. And not persecution.

Vengeful God, loving God.

by K.W. Leslie, 02 December 2016

When I translate the psalms, I make ’em rhyme because I can. Iambic octometer, anyone?

Psalm 3 KWL
0 David’s psalm, while fleeing the presence of his son Absalom.
1 My enemies—ten thousand, LORD!—have multiplied and charge at me!
2 The myriads say of my life, “God’s rescue? Not for he.” Selah.
3 But you, LORD, are my shield and honor, granting my authority.
4 I call the LORD, who from his holy mountain answers me. Selah.
5 I lay my head to sleep, and wake because the LORD has strengthened me.
6 Do I fear opposition from ten thousand circling people? Nah.
7 You rose and saved me, LORD my God. Face-punched my every enemy.
Broke evildoers’ teeth. 8 You bless your own with rescue, LORD. Selah.

Psalm 3 is Adonái me-rabu (Latin, Domine, quid multiplicati), “LORD, how are they increased,” written by King David ben Jesse in the 10th century BC, and as verse 0 points out, it was when his son Absalom attempted to overthrow him.

It’s a vengeance psalm. One of many. David liked to write ’em, and he’s not the only one; a lot of the prophets wrote vengeance poetry too. Because the psalms are some of the better-known passages of the bible, it creates a lot of problems for Christians: We read this stuff, and have the darnedest time reconciling it with the way Jesus and his apostles describe his Father in the New Testament. In the NT, God is love. In the OT—if you’re selectively reading it, and most Christians do—God appears to be all outrage and wrath.


From The Simpsons episode 14.10, “Pray Anything.”

The title of this article comes from an episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets ahold one of those lenticular photos—a 3D image, some of which will change when you tilt ’em. One image is of God (or at least the old guy from the Sistine Chapel ceiling) looking wrathful. The other is of God giving a thumbs up. “Vengeful God… loving God,” Homer comments.

Bipolar God, apparently.

But is he? Nah.

So where do we get this idea? Simple: We’re overlaying our own bad attitudes onto God. We’re vengeful, so when we read the Old Testament and see God righteously judging the nations, we presume he’s vengeful. We confuse God’s righteous anger with our own far-from-righteous anger. We even use it to justify doing likewise. But we’re too corrupt to act in anger without sliding into evil. God has self-control. We don’t.

Sucking up to God.

by K.W. Leslie, 22 November 2016

Matthew 6.9-10, Luke 11.2.

All my life I’ve heard Christian prayer leaders instruct me that before we start asking God for things, it’s only proper to begin with praise. Tell God how great he is. How mighty. How awesome. Supposedly that’s how Jesus demonstrated we’re to start in the Lord’s Prayer, with “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” Because we wanna make his name holy and embrace his will.

This attitude reminds me way too much of the sycophantic prayer we find in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:

CHAPLAIN. “Let us praise God. Oh Lord…”
CONGREGATION. [ritually repeating] “Oh Lord…”
CHAPLAIN. “Oooh you are so big!
CONGREGATION. “Oooh you are so big.”
CHAPLAIN. “So absolutely huge!”
CONGREGATION. “So absolutely huge.”
CHAPLAIN. “Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you!”
CONGREGATION. “Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.”
CHAPLAIN. “Forgive us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.”
CONGREGATION. “And bare-faced flattery.”
CHAPLAIN. “But you are so strong and, well, just so super!”
CONGREGATION. “Fantastic.”

The problem with it? It’s not what the Lord’s Prayer means… and to a large degree it’s hypocrisy. When we come to God with legitimate prayer requests, small or serious, and begin with the fawning adulation, how is this significantly different from a teenager telling her dad “I love you so much” before she asks him for money? I kiss God’s boots; I earn his favor. Now he owes me. Right?

Of course it’s wrong. Yet it’s what we see: Christians figuring the more they praise God, the better he thinks of them. Or as pagans would put it, the more karma they’re generating. The more apt he is to give us what we ask, even when we really shouldn’t ask for such things ’cause our ulterior motives are bad. Jm 4.3 But we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking this is how prayer should be done. It’s not honest praise; it’s a quid pro quo.

In reality prayer requests are about grace. They’re about God giving us what he wants to give us, only because he loves us, and not because we merit or earned it.

Likewise praise is about appreciating God, about reminding ourselves of his greatness. If you wanna do a lot of that, I direct you to Psalms. But the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t actually include praise—unless you’re using the Didache version which includes, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”

And in that case it follows the examples shown in Psalms: The psalmists tended to pour out their heart to God first. Express their woes, state their problem, ask for help. Then—after God talked ’em down, or told them he’d take care of it—then they ended their prayers with praise and gratitude. Honest gratitude.

Saying grace.

by K.W. Leslie, 18 October 2016

The most common type of prayer—the one we see most often, and probably the type taken the least seriously—is the prayer before meals. We call it “grace.” Not to be confused with God’s generous, forgiving attitude.

Why don’t people take it seriously? Because it’s dead religion. Christians might pray it as a living act of religion, one of the acts we do to further our relationship with God. But Christians and pagans alike say grace before meals as the dead kind of religion: We do it ’cause it’s just what people do in our culture. It’s custom. It’s tradition. It’s habit. But it doesn’t mean anything.

Nope, not said out of gratitude. Nor love. Nor devotion. Nor even as a reminder of these things. We say grace because if we didn’t say grace, Grandma would slap the food out of our hands and say, “You didn’t say grace!” We say grace because Dad would take his seat at the table, fold his hands like you do for prayer, and give us kids dirty looks until we stopped eating, noticed what he was doing, and mimicked his behavior. We say grace because it’s how people wait for everyone to be ready before the meal starts. God has nothing to do with it—beyond a minor acknowledgment.

You notice in these scenarios, it’s because Grandma or Dad wanted to say grace. Not because anybody else did. Or even cared. It’s enforced religion: Everybody’s gotta participate in their spiritual practice, not to grow our own relationships with God, but because our parents felt it wasn’t proper to eat before a ritual prayer. It’s a formality.

And in some cases, it’s a superstition: If you don’t bless the food, it’s not blessed. Some will even say cursed.

So as a result of all this Christianist junk behind saying grace, we wind up with people who treat it as an annoyance. Or even passive-aggressively mock it. Like the silly rote prayers.

Good bread, good meat.
Good God, let’s eat.
Rub a dub dub
Thanks for the grub
Yea, God!

At one children’s ministry I worked with, we had a rote prayer we used for grace. Actually it was an old hymn, suitable for thanking God for food. And since each line was eight syllables long, it meant it perfectly fit a whole lot of tunes. Like different TV theme songs. The adults would have the kids sing their grace to these silly songs… then wonder why the kids didn’t take grace all that seriously. Well, duh. Obviously they weren’t being taught to.

Okay, so let’s take a more serious look at saying grace. And, believe it or not, whether we oughta drop the practice. Yeah, you read right.

How we Christians imagine God’s presence.

by K.W. Leslie, 11 October 2016
OMNIPRESENT ɑm.nɪ'prɛ.zənt adjective. Everywhere at once. Ubiquitous.
[Omnipresence ɑm.nɪ'prɛ.zəns noun.]

We Christians believe God is everywhere. Not just that he sees everywhere; Ps 33.13-14 he actually is everywhere. He’s not limited by space. (Nor time, although a lot of Christians only use the whole “sees everywhere” idea to discuss time. Not me. Everywhere also means every-when. Jn 8.58) The way David put it, God has no such limits.

Psalm 139.7-12 NLT
7 I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.

However. Though we believe this, we Christians sometimes talk about God’s presence as not always being here. Sometimes it’s here. Sometimes not.

By presence, Christians tend to mean a wholly different thing than omnipresence. We say yeah, sure, God’s everywhere, including here. But sometimes God is really here. The rest of the time he’s… well, not.

We make it sound a lot like God’s some semi-senile grandpa sitting in the corner, whose mind is almost always elsewhere. Though on some conscious level, he sorta knows stuff is going on in the room. And once we call upon him—“Hey grandpa!”—he snaps out of his reverie and interacts with us. But unlike this grandpa, God’s actually up to something in those other places. That’s why his mind is focused on that, and not so much this. He keeps a toe in our pool, just in case we need to call upon him again. When we do, here he is.

Is this really how God works? Not even close.

The Hebrew word we tend to translate as “presence” is פָּנֶה/panéh, “face,” as in “the LORD’s face,” or “the LORD’s presence,” or “before the LORD.” Found all over the bible. Ge 19.13, Ex 6.12, 1Sa 26.20, Ps 34.16, 1Pe 3.12 Of course it doesn’t mean a literal face. He didn’t really have one till he became human. So, “presence.”

God’s presence is everywhere. That’s literally what omnipresence means. But we humans can’t wrap our brains around the idea. You know how when you hear a voice and can’t see it, you look around till you know where that voice is coming from—and which direction to face? Psychologically, we need a direction to face. We need a focal point we can interact with. If we don’t have one, our mind will invent one for us. God’s gotta be in some direction, relative to our location. Up, down, in front of us, behind us, in the direction of Jerusalem, wherever. We need to know where his face is… so we can face him.

But he’s everywhere.

“Can I pray for you?”

by K.W. Leslie, 20 September 2016

When you don’t know what to do, talk to God.

Not only is this always good advice to follow, but it’s good advice when dealing with others. When other people share their difficulties with us, we don’t always know how to respond. Prayer’s one of the best responses—if not the best, period. It’s turning to God as our first resort.

I know; plenty of people think they know just what to do when they hear someone’s troubles. That’s why they immediately offer it: Advice. No, the person sharing their woes didn’t ask for it. Often they just wanted to vent to someone. But that’s not gonna stop people from inflicting bad advice upon ’em anyway.

Remember Job’s friends? For a week he kept his mouth shut, Jb 2.13 but then he made the mistake of lamenting in front of them, Jb 3 and it opened up their floodgates of bad advice, naive statements, sorry platitudes—you know, the same stuff people still offer as advice, which just goes to show they’ve never really read Job. It pissed the LORD off, ’cause nothing they said about him was correct. Jb 42.7 Like I said, shoulda gone to him first.

Me, I try to keep the unsolicited advice to a minimum. If you want it, I’ll offer it, with the usual disclaimer that I’m hardly infallible. But really, the best response is, “Can I pray for you?”

And when we offer to pray for them, let’s not do the similar platitudinous “I’ll pray for you.” Mostly because among Christianists, “I’ll pray for you” means one of two things:

  • “I’m really offended by what you just said. Go to hell. No, wait; I need to sound Christian. ‘I’ll pray for you.’ Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
  • “Oh Lord, I don’t care about all your miserable problems. I’ve got my own stuff to deal with. How do I get out of this dreary conversation? ‘I’ll pray for you.’ Good; now I can leave.”

It’s seldom based on sympathy.

Well, don’t be one of those unsympathetic jerks. If you’re offering to pray for them, no time like the present. Stand right there and pray. Doesn’t need to be a long prayer; doesn’t need to be perfect words. Just needs to be you, telling God to help ’em out.

The serenity prayer.

by K.W. Leslie, 31 August 2016

One of the more popular rote prayers is “the serenity prayer.” It’s prayed by Christians and pagans alike, ’cause it’s the official prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. Other 12-step programs use it as well.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it,
trusting that you will make all things right
if I surrender to your will,
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with you forever in the next.
Amen.

Credit for the prayer is usually given to American theologian and philosopher Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), although the original version looks a bit different. Its first publication was in the March 1933 edition of The Woman’s Press, in Winnifred Crane Wygal’s article “On the Edge of Tomorrow.”

Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.

Wygal was a grad student at Union Theological Seminary, Neibuhr’s school. In her 1940 book We Plan Our Own Worship Services, she indicated she got the prayer from him. Neibuhr’s daughter Elisabeth Sifton claimed her father wrote it for a Sunday service in 1943. As you notice, she was a bit off on the date—which caused some confusion, and controversy, when Fred R. Shapiro of Yale Law School published a New York Times article in 2008 stating he’d found the prayer published eight times before 1943. At the time, he questioned whether Niebuhr had even authored it. He doesn’t now.

Alcoholics Anonymous founder William Griffith Wilson (a.k.a. “Bill W.”) came across the prayer in early 1942. A member of his New York group found it in a New York Herald Tribune obituary and shared it. The group immediately adopted it, and included a copy of it in every outgoing letter.

Niebuhr admitted the idea behind the prayer had been “spooking around” for centuries. You can even find it expressed in Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man: “The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.”

When the Spirit touches you… and you fall down.

by K.W. Leslie, 07 June 2016

Yeah, God’s involved. No, it’s not from the bible. So?

SLAIN IN THE SPIRIT /sleɪn ɪn ðə 'spɪr.ɪt/ vt. Fall down as a result (primary or secondary) of the Holy Spirit’s activity.
[Slay in the Spirit /sleɪ ɪn ðə 'spɪr.ɪt/ vt.]

A lot of Christians believe if a practice isn’t found in the bible, we shouldn’t do it.

Nope, we’re not at all consistent about this belief. Loads of churches and Christians have outside-the-bible practices. In the bible, churches met daily, not primarily Sunday mornings. In the bible, the worship songs are the psalms; where’d all these new compositions come from? In the bible, Christians prayed in tongues, but you’ll notice a number of churches have banned that practice. In the bible, women prophesied, and you’ll notice a lot of these same churches banned that too. I frequently read my bible on my computer or phone, or listen to it on my iPod—and you do realize electronics aren’t in the bible, right?

Obviously if it’s banned in the bible—if Jesus or the apostles forbade it—we shouldn’t do it. But this isn’t that. This is the insistence only stuff with a biblical precedent oughta be done. And if we’re gonna hew to that guideline closely, time to turn off the electricity in our churches: No more microphones, no more video projectors. Heck, no more books with pages. All our bibles need to be scrolls. Written in the original languages.

Basically the “If it’s not in the bible, we shouldn’t do it” argument, is hypocrisy. It’s an excuse Christians use for getting rid of anything they don’t like, or anything which makes ’em uncomfortable. Whenever they get the heebie-jeebies, they try to enforce this “rule”; whenever they don’t care, they don’t bother. It has nothing to do with following the scriptures, and everything to do with maintaining their calm.

This inconsistent behavior applies to a whole lot of prayer practices, but I use it today ’cause I’m gonna bring up the prayer practice of getting “slain in the Spirit.” Yeah, it’s a prayer practice: It’s the result of God giving us a profound revelation through prayer, and as a result of its intensity, Christians fall over. And sometimes do other stuff, but usually we just fall over.