An Agnostic Looks at Prayer

The New York Times Magazine recently published this article, where an agnostic looks at prayer from different faith viewpoints. Much of the article explains how people pray without really believing in God -- or at least a God who answers prayer.

Take Rabbi Marc Gellman when helping people pray:

“I tell them to start with prayers of Thanks! That’s what Christians call ‘grace.’ Everybody has something to be grateful for.”

“What if the person doesn’t believe in God?”

“Then I tell him to thank who or what seems appropriate,” Gellman said. “Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. If people say prayer is a crutch, I don’t disagree. Sometimes you need a crutch. But I don’t believe in a God who is a magician and miraculously answers individual prayer. That’s absurd.

But the author kind of ends in a refreshing way -- with a group of children in a Pentacostal church who tell him of all the people that have been helped because of their prayers:

There are some 300,000 churches in America, and I could have picked any one to attend on Easter morning, but I liked being in this one. Especially the kids. They didn’t need Reverend Henderson’s prayer techniques, or the high-tech mantras of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Their prayers weren’t Rabbi Gellman’s suburban Jewish prayers of Thanks! offered to whom it may concern. They didn’t pray to de-center their egos or find transcendence or to set off on a lifelong therapeutic spiritual journey. They prayed to a God with whom they were on a first-name basis, and they believed their prayers gave them power, which they used on behalf of their asthmatic sisters and infirm grandparents and a kid they knew with burns on his body. Sitting in church on Easter morning, I realized that I was probably never going to become a praying man. But if, by some miracle, I ever do, I hope my prayers will be like the prayers of the kids I met at the Love church in Berkeley Springs. Straight-up Gimme! on behalf of people who really need the help.

Well said.