Don: To claim that one can penetrate the secrets of god, and know the works of god, and have his power at one’s beck and call is not faith; it is magic. God is not in our service; we are in his service.
For primitive, unsophisticated, and ignorant Man, for innocent children, and perhaps also for some of the mentally ill, everything in life has a meaning. Scientific concepts having to do with cause and effect and the fact that certain events will have certain consequences, and the scientific notion that we are governed, as it were, by the thermodynamic, gravitational, and other laws of nature, are completely inaccessible to them.
If a civilized and educated person tells such a primitive (or innocent or mentally ill) person that there is going to be an eclipse tomorrow, and the eclipse indeed happens, then the primitive will believe that his informant somehow caused the eclipse, otherwise he could not have known it was going to occur.
To the ignorant, the world appears to be the playground of divine forces—sometimes benevolent, often malevolent—whose intentions must be discovered and whose favors must be won in order to ward off malevolence and stimulate beneficence. So the primitives concoct omens and resort to sorcery to appease the gods. This is part and parcel of the fundamental mindset of the primitive, to whom nothing that occurs in life—including death— is without meaning. Death is the result of a curse, and evil spell. The cry of a bird, the howl of the wind, the clouds in the sky all convey meaning and messages from the divine forces operating in the world.
Children often view elders, especially their parents, with godlike reverence. A child who hurts her finger will ask mommy to kiss it better—and behold, it does! The child, the innocent, the primitive, does not see things in symbolic ways; rather, it sees everything in a very real and concrete way. When my grandson turns a chair upside down to ride it like a chariot, it is to him a real chariot, not just a symbol of a chariot.
In the modern world of education, learning, science, and cause/effect, even medicine sometimes takes on a magical, mystical quality. The common element in such thinking is fear of something that we cannot understand and control. The inability to see the mechanisms by which things work leads to this kind of fear. So although modern science may understand such things as weather, lightning, and thunder, to the ancient Greeks, these were activities of the gods. Even Job heard the voice of god in the thunder.
The solution then seems simply to inform and educate the primitive, innocent mind, and perhaps medicate the mentally ill, to eradicate the belief in magic. But it is also true for many—especially the skeptical—that the bible stories are magical, not rational. They may be beautiful, they may have poetic value, but to the skeptic they are in no way real.
And yet, science does not liberate man and woman from the fear that drives them to magic. Every day, I tell my patients how science can treat their disease; only for them to become almost more afraid of the treatment than of their disease. So it may be that in some ways and in some cases modern, scientific, educated Wo/Man can be just as susceptible to fear as primitive Wo/Man, and therefore just as susceptible to magical solutions. The popularity of the lottery to win huge amounts with almost no effort, of youth-promising cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, of horoscopes and so on seems to show that otherwise rational people are susceptible to belief in magic. I once treated a colon cancer patient from India—a PhD, who had many physicians in her family—who asked me to change the date set for her surgery because it was “inauspicious.”
We still talk of “miracles of science” as though magic were involved. We have an insatiable desire to cling to magic, to hunger for the marvelous, to thirst for the magnificent—but all of it easy and requiring little effort to obtain.
What does this have to do with our topic, “Prayer”? Uncertainty is harder for Man to bear than error. We would rather be certain than right. Take pathology, which is medicine’s Supreme Court for deciding whether a tissue is diseased or not. A pathologist once told me that pathologists are not always right, but they are never in doubt. To some extent we need to be certain more than we need to be right. So belief in magic—even if you include god as magic—is preferred over doubt.
But the bible points continuously to the contrast between magic and god, and calls continuously for us to turn away from magic and toward the true god. The opening words of the Ten Commandments exhort us to put no other gods before him and to make no graven images. This is a good starting point in unlocking the idea of what it is to fall under the temptation of magic: It is to follow false gods—creations of Man—rather than the god of creation. Making false gods is not a very sophisticated type of magical temptation. To make false idols out of relationships, love, artwork, one’s work, morality, even science is a very primitive kind of magic, one that scripture warns of. In Luke 16:13, Jesus says “You can’t serve god and Mammon.”
There is a much more subtle aspect to idolatry, which is alluded to in Matthew 4, Mark 2, and Luke: The temptation of Jesus, where early in his ministry—when he knows that he is the messiah and knows that he has divine power—he tries to work out how he should use his power. His people, the Jews, expect their messiah to overthrow the Romans. As he meditates—as he prays—in the desert, he encounters not only god, but the devil as well. How did he—and how can we—distinguish between god and the devil, especially when the devil comes quoting scripture and even giving advice to Jesus that is prima facie aimed at advancing Jesus’ mission? This is a struggle between the true god, and the false god of magic. It is the most subtle of temptations, and it is one into which we fall so easily when we pray.
To resort to magic, even divine magic; to aim at magical success even in god’s own cause is what is at stake on the story of the Temptation of Jesus. This is prayer at its most subtle. The devil’s response seems as if it is answering something we need and conforms to scripture. But Jesus resisted and laid claim to his own scripture: That the devil should not tempt the lord his god (Deuteronomy 6.)
In this sense, magic comes in two forms: Crude (money, love, etc.) and subtle (trying to use god’s magical gifts even for his own cause, for example: His promises, the faith that he has given us, the experiences that he gives us, even his grace, the bible that he has inspired, the doctrine that he has revealed, even the prayer that he has taught us.) This is the subtle temptation to harness the power of god for our own ends, which is the definition of magic as I am using it.
In the next words of the Decalogue, in Exodus 12:7, it says “Thou shalt not take the name of god in vain.” This is commonly taken to be a prohibition against swearing oaths, but it may have another purpose: To put us on our guard against the subtle temptation of magic. Jesus in the desert teaches us that our prayer can only be uttered in the very crucible of faith.
We see the same thing in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Peter hacks off the ear of a servant of the high priest, whom Jesus instantly heals, saying to Peter (Matthew 26:53): “Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” When we pray, we tend to pray for those 12 legions. As a boy, I used to wish that Jesus would have called forth the 12 legions. This illustrates the childish belief in magic, Jesus rejects this. He bows himself to the will of god, even to the extent of going to the cross. It makes us very uncomfortable, but the complete surrender of our will to god is required.
In 1 Samuel 4, the Israelites resorted to magic when they were losing the war with the Philistines. The magic was to take the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them as a talisman. This was primitive magic. Of course, the Israelites lost the war and, with it, the Ark. But god did not abandon them, and the Ark became a bad luck charm for the Philistines, who therefore returned it to the Israelites, along with gifts, to appease the Israelite gods. Samuel then encouraged his people to abandon their belief in the magical power of god in favor of a true understanding of repentance and faith.
A belief in magic results in two potential contrary problems. One is to refrain from bold action even when god requires it of us, which perhaps explains why we don’t see the power of god displayed in our daily life. The other is that through our zeal to demonstrate the power of god and the effectiveness of our prayer, we go for the sensational when god does not will it. In these ways, the belief in magic insinuates itself into our hearts and even into the wake of our most authentic and genuine spiritual experiences.
So the frontier between faith and magic is the border between pride and humility. The humble search for god, as opposed to the proud claim to possess him, is the contrast between truth and magic. Our quarrels about religion, about the Christian church, and even about our own church, usually involve this line, this division between a humble search for god and the proud claim to possess him and the knowledge of him. When we do so proudly proclaim, we show ourselves as having succumbed to the temptation—of having fallen under the spell, as it were—of magic.
All of this comes under the concept of the graven image in the Ten Commandments, because it substitutes for the truth about God, the truth received from god, and the truth about god received from god himself.
The interface between magic and truth is a dangerous one, but one we must confront. It reminds me of a short wave radio, which is very sensitive to a slight movement of the frequency dial. One can slip from a Beethoven symphony to punk rock in a heartbeat. Praying is like trying to tune in to the Beethoven frequency on a short wave radio: If you are just a little bit off on the dial, you may end up receiving the spiritual equivalent of punk rock, thereby thwarting the true outcome of prayer: The health and well-being of the soul.
Given everything we have discussed about prayer over the past few weeks, how can we weave it all together into a tapestry depicting what our prayer life should ideally look like? The idea that we serve a god who will not send us legions of angels to fight our battles for us is unnerving to many. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew that while god was able to do so, he was not obligated. The expectation of prayer is what Jesus talked about in teaching us how to pray and what Paul meant when he said (Romans) that we don’t know how to pray and the spirit will pray for us anyway. The idea that we cannot shape our prayers to be effective suggests not that we don’t understand the technicalities of prayer (how to pray, whether kneeling or standing; what we should say, etc.) but on what we believe the outcome of prayer should be.
Last week we discussed the autonomic nervous system, and how we don’t fully appreciate the function of prayer. It’s as if we expected a kidney to function like a heart. Jesus taught us on the Garden of Gethsemane that asking for legions of angels to come to one’s aid is more about magic than about true faith in God.
David: The Buddhist (and others’) notion of prayer is as meditation designed to empty the mind and open it to enlightenment; to the true word of god. I wonder how even they can be sure that what enters their mind in that trance-like state is not, as it was for Jesus when he went to meditate in the desert, the voice of Satan?
Don: I am struck by how close the Devil stuck to scripture in that encounter, but subtly and perniciously tried to draw Jesus (as he tries, with much greater success, to draw us!) to magic rather than true faith. The fact, as surely the Devil knows and we too know if we just think about even our own experience, is that god is not in the business of sending in the Fifth Cavalry whenever we utter a prayer. For people whose faith is based on belief in such magic, the effect of god’s apparent non-response—as surely the Devil knows and wants, and as Michael alluded to in our meeting a week or two ago—is to shake their faith to the point of abandoning god.
None of us wants to serve a powerless god, and that’s what makes our discussion of prayer so vitally important. Jesus’s own practice makes clear that prayer was vital to him; human practice over the ages shows that prayer is vital and basic to us. The difference between us and Jesus is in how we expect god to respond to prayer.
Jason: There is a fine line between god’s will and our will. We rarely approach prayer through the aspect of god’s will being done. We pray for legions of angels, we pray for other people, for healthy finances, and so on. We think that persistence will pay off, that god will eventually give in and grant us what we want.
But the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane shows that Jesus was driven by god’s will even as he implored to be spared the death he knew was coming. By praying for god’s will to be done, by aligning with god’s will prefatory to praying for magic, then indeed the prayer was and is answered always and absolutely in the affirmative. This is far removed from our concept of prayer today, but if we could adopt this as a community—if we could make that paradigm shift—we would see far more value and power in prayer.
Pastor Ariel: Prayer does not necessarily change my view of god, but my view of god changes my prayer. The instruction in the Ten Commandments not to take the name of god in vain was reinforced by Jesus when he said, just before delivering the Lord’s Prayer, “When you pray, do not use vain repetitions.” This implies an element of idolatry, of magic, if we approach god in a vain way. The Ten Commandments are about challenging humanity to understand who god is; his character.
The Lord’s Prayer begins with “your…, your…, your…” then transitions to “our…, us…, our…” with not a “my, me or I” in sight. Jesus said in his preamble: “Your father knows the things you need before you ask him” and yet the Prayer asks “Give us bread, … give us forgiveness,” and so on. God wants us to know that we need these things, even though he already knows that we need them.
Through prayer, we can come to know god not as an idol, which is something any human can manufacture, but as an entity we humans cannot even come close to conceiving, let alone manufacturing. God is not upset by our pecuniary prayer. Getting to know him is a life-long process, and as we pray in an ever-less selfish and ever-more submissive way, where—like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane—we do not try to manipulate him, he reveals more and more of himself to us. It takes a high level of trust to say to god “Thy will be done even though it may not be what I want.” But that is the level to which we should aspire through our prayer.
Michael: If god’s will always prevails whether we pray for it or not, then why bother to pray for it? By praying for it, do we accelerate the implementation of god’s will?
Jason: That suggests that by calling for god’s will to be done we are somehow helping him. But the fact is, god does not need our help. He may want it, but he does not need it. If his will is always done, then prayer must be only for our benefit, not his. But to be effective—to benefit us by increasing our ability pass god’s grace on to others, to be in tune with our inner light—we must, through humble prayer, submit to the will of god.
Kiran: We need to enter prayer in the spirit not of asking for benefits but of throwing ourselves on his mercy, secure in the knowledge that he knows what is best for us. It is not easy for us to be humble, but it is easier when one realizes what a vain expectation it is to be able to control god, to manipulate this mighty being to our selfish ends.
Jason: Yes, humility does not come naturally or easily to us, and our inability to wear it is the reason why conflict so often goes unresolved. We find it hard to say “I’m wrong” or “I don’t know.” And it’s easy to say “Thy will be done” when all is fine and dandy in one’s life, but if one’s child is dying, or one has just lost a job, or can’t pay the rent, it’s hard not to ask for specific help. But if we can still, even in such circumstances, say “Thy will be done,” then we are strengthened. This is not to say that we cannot ask for help; it is to say that we should humbly accept whatever results from our prayer.
Michael: I still find it hard to understand why, if the outcome of prayer is the will of god, we need to pray.
Jason: To me, it simply leaves the mind open to understanding the will of god, and it increasing my capacity to love.
Don: It may be that there is something about the end product of prayer that is dependent upon the stage of faith in which we find ourselves. Maybe at an immature level of faith, it is not a bad thing that people who see what they judge to be a prayer being answered.
Michael: Now I am even more confused! Now we have levels of faith and prayer!
David: I am troubled by the notion that prayer is ultimately for our benefit, not for god’s. If we believe that, then prayer is a selfish act and we should not do selfish acts. To me, the only reason to pray is for god, that his will be done. After all, his is not the only will in the universe! Faith is simply the belief that god’s will will prevail, whether it benefits us or not. That is what Jesus’s prayer was about in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said: It’s grand that I die a horrible death by crucifixion, if that is thy will.
Don: Clearly, this all needs more work!
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