April 29, 2007

Next time your finger is cut, suspend your praying over it to see if it heals without a request to God. Then when you get cancer or some other incurable disease, hold off on that praying and see if it heals itself.

The reason we pray for the cancer and not the cut finger is because of fear. Fear causes us to mix superstition in our prayer requests by adding formulas to our prayers.

Formulas are indicated by idioms like:

"if we send up enough prayers they will break through"

"if YOU have enough faith or if you will only believe"

"if you pray hard enough".

Prayer has become a metaphor which has lost its true meaning. It is as to say "God bless you" after sneezing. There is only the connotation of a god and no meaning is needed because we are acknowledging the sneezing, not the reality of a deity. "Pray for the situation" has become more about the situation than the deity I am praying to.