Almighty

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

-C.S. Lewis

I find myself in a bit of a faith bind at present. Not the epic faith crisis of finding out that the Bible is in fact, made up, but an interesting predicament nonetheless. It is mostly the result of two gentlemen, of whom I'm sure one would be infinitely amused if he knew how much difficulty his questions are causing.


The difficulty comes not from any disbelief in the doctrine of the Resurrection, or a deep rooted distrust in the validity of Scripture. Instead, I find myself focusing on something else I've always found particularly troublesome.


Prayer.


My senior year in college I had to take an upper-division theology class preselected by the department. I enrolled in Benedictine Spirituality and embarked on one of the most painfully boring academic experiences of my life. However, one of our conversations centered on prayer and spirituality. One of the books we read was about praying our experiences. I was irritated enough by most of the fluffy class content, but this one took the cake. The book's premise is that we can communicate with God by simply by talking through our day with another person.


Are you kidding? I mean, really? This constituted an upper division theology class? It was so fluffy and seemed like such an insincere cop-out of a prayer style that I wasn't the only person to leave the class feeling like I had just wasted well over an hour of my life. Despite our feelings of frustration, many of use acknowledged that we were bad "pray-ers" and that despite devoting four years of our respective lives studying God, we didn't know how to talk to Her. Most of us pushed this to the back of our minds and went about the everyday business of understanding God intellectually instead of trying to maintain a relationship.

Well, the question remained unanswered and I've always been nagged by the thought that there's something wrong with the way I pray. I've hated intercessory prayer for a long, long time. I've never been able to reason out why some intercessions are "answered" and some are not. I deeply dislike the expression "God has a plan for you" when used as a kind of condolence. It's a more arrogant response than anyone who's been in a position of real pain or distress should have to hear. How condescending can you be?

This is where my difficulty as a Christian lies. We are specifically told to pray for the recovery of our sick and our daily bread (to use Lewis's turn of phrase.) As I became a disciple (so to speak) of Rahner's I thought that I finally found a way out of my difficulty. Instead of praying for the recovery of our sick, we should pray for the grace to understand God's will in the world. This seemed to solve the difficulty for some time. But, again, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous this whole concept of prayer seems. I want, and believe that I am hard-wired to want, a God that I can understand personally. I want to be able to talk to Her the same way I talk to my mom when something's bothering me. I want to believe that there's an answer waiting somewhere for me if I can ever shut up long enough to hear it.

At this point, it seems as though the most intellectually sound thing I could do would be one of the following.

1. Drop the label of a Christian and the necessary prayer baggage that comes with it. (Much easier said than done, particularly as there's still that sticky believe in the Resurrection.)
2. Languish in a state of non-prayer and disregard it. Focus on the more concrete aspects of Catholicism (Catholic Social Teaching, mainly)

I'm not really a fan of either of these options. I don't have my blinders entirely on here. I know that religion is responsible for a number of horrifying things (the Crusades, the degradation of women, wars, etc.). But I've also seen the liberating aspects of faith when it (in my opinion) is used to better understand the world and build the kingdom on earth. I believe whole-heartedly that faith can, and does, help people to transform. My own conversion has transformed my life. It, like Lewis has said, has allowed me to see a number of other aspects of life that were hidden from me.

But it seems as though this transformation cannot occur without a personal God who listens and responds when you talk. But at the same time, I can't quite reconcile that God who listens to any of my intellectual ideas about God.

Perhaps I'm really an apostate and don't want to admit to it. It's possible that studying theology at a master's level is the very last thing that I need to do at this point in my life.

I'll wrap up with the video that really made me pause and try to figure out what my own feelings on prayer are.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/112