A letter to the editor on the subject of prayer appeared in the Opinion pages of our local newspaper a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me of a letter a devout Christain sent to me three or four years ago, and to whom I sent this reply. I decided to end a much too long absence from my blog with …
Dear M*******
Yes, for the most part I agree with everything in your list of what a non-Christian can, or should do, when prayers are said at public functions. Ever since I left the fundamental church of which I was a member for some eleven years, I’ve made no spoken objection to prayer except when called upon to do the praying. In spite of my lack of faith in prayer, I do as you suggest … up to a point. I sit back and think on anything other than the prayer prayed. Sometimes I think about how grateful I am to be free from belief in such things as an unseen God, gods, angels, demons, devils, spirits—both good and bad—and all things relating to the paranormal. I am thankful to be free from all myths and superstitions with which the religious zealot endeavors to shackle my mind.
In your letter you stated, ‘it wouldn’t bother me a bit if, while at a graduation service, I heard a Buddhist pray a Buddhist prayer.’ Buddhists, my dear friend, do not condemn the unbelievers to a mythical hell as does the fundamental Christian church to which you belong.
However, if the praying-believer you were listening to happened to be a Muslim praising Allah—just another name for “God”, and for keeping Muslim-believeing nations safe from their enemies, and thanking Allah for his goodness to the Muslim world, your words, It wouldn’t bother me at all, might change to something like, Why can’t they keep their faith in their mosques, or in their homes where it belongs? Somehow that thought does not occur to Christians who think it is both their right and their duty to spread their faith wherever and whenever the occasion presents itself—even in tax-free, public schools and other such institutions.
Having written that, I still can’t get my panties in a knot objecting to people praying wherever they want to pray. The question is: why, when Jesus himself said it is far better to go into one’s closet to pray than to do as the hypocrites and pray aloud in public, why pray in public at all?
Whether one prays or not, for me the answer lies in the final verse of a poem I wrote on the subject of prayer. . .
The world goes spinning on through space
while heaven’s graces fall
as randomly as springtime rain
and sunshine on us all.
In the meantime, let us agree to disagree.
Christians who think it is both their right and their duty to spread their faith wherever and whenever the occasion presents itself—
this line really summed it up for me.. they feel like god commissioned them to “save” us and they are not doing their job if they are not subjecting your world to their belife system…..
as always mary, you nipped it in the bud!!!!!
As always, thanks Paisley for your support. However, it is not just the evengelizing, fundamental, hell-beliving Christian who is dead-set on evangelizing the world: what group is more active and more certain that they, and only they, have the “truth” when it comes to the “Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ than the Jehovah Witness? I’ll grant them this: they are far closer to the gospel of Jesus than most “churches, but this morning I read on one blog enough ridicule, satire, sarcasm, and mockery of all those who do not accept their faith as the one and only truth, to give me material for several essays. I think the first will be how all Christians have stripped Jesus of all that made him what he was: a devout Jew who never deviated from his faith, though he did preach a loving and forgiving Yahweh instead of the Yahweh found in Mosiac law.
Right on Mary! I always get the feeling that born againers suffered brain damage during the re-birth. I wish those who want to share their faith actually lived their faith.
Very Good post Mary. More “Christians” and Christ-like people out side the church then in them and many don’t see the difference between “churchy” doctrine and private faith.
Elecpencil, what a original thought—brain damage brought on during “rebirthing”. If I ever use it, I’ll give you the credit.
Tristan, I shall always regret the fact that I shall never know you as anything other than a “blog-friend”. When I visit your blog, it’s a bit like visiting my now deceased friend, LI Hidley, an artist who made a name for himself in the Harrisburg, PA. area. I still miss him.
My sister has become a Christian. In the first week of finding her new faith she tried to convert me. She is constantly offering to pray for me. I agree completely with elecpencil. I too wish they would live their faith instead of spending all their time trying to share it.