I am an atheist so prayer is for me meaningless. But I wonder what it means to a believer. Why do people pray? I shall attempt to answer that for a Christian and essentially for a middle of the road Anglican. I know too little about any other denomination and certainly too little about another religion to attempt an answer.

Originally the God or Gods were thought control the natural world since there was no other explanation. Unless the Gods were placated spring might not follow winter or night follow day. And if hail came to flatten the wheat, that was because the Gods were angry. That view survived more-or-less into the middle ages. The view is explicit in the Old Testament but is more nuanced in the New. With the rise of science the notion of a hands-on God keeping the natural order going has become intellectually untenable. But we still sing, “All good things around us are sent from heaven above.” “He only is the maker of all things near and far, He paints the wayside flower, He lights the evening star, The wind and wave obey him, By him the birds are fed, “ and so on. Even if we do not regard the whole world as miraculous -that is outside natural laws- we believe God can suspend those laws if he chooses; we believe in the possibility of miracles.
And we still adopt the posture of a supplicant; we kneel to pray. That too seems to me a relic of the time when God was a couple of steps up from the Lord in his castle. I feel God might echo Lady Bracknel, “Rise from this semi recumbent position; it is most indecorous”.
Prayer takes many forms but it is always for something. That seems to me at odds with the concept of an all wise, all seeing God. A God who notes even the fall of a sparrow surely does not need to be told about the suffering in Darfur. If we pray for those in Darfur, what is the implication? Surely we are not saying,” Sorry God to bring this to your attention but there is something very unpleasant going on in Darfur.” Are we saying, “Please God sort it out.”? God will surely reply. “With very rare and specific, limited exceptions, I have denied myself the luxury of intervening. This is man’s doing and man will have to sort it out.” Are we saying, “Please God tell me what I ought to do?” God might say, ”I cannot tell you in precise terms. You have intelligence, compassion and knowledge, and if you lack knowledge there are ways to find out more. Use what I have given you. There is unlikely to be a clear answer. You may think that I am guiding you to the best result but really you are getting there yourself. That is the system I have ordained.”
We say, “God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hide.” So in our prayers we cannot be telling God anything he does not already know. If we have sinned, He knows that. If we regret our sin, He knows that too. If we fail to acknowledge that we have sinned- if we have no sense of sin- He knows that as well, although what he makes of that is not clear. Never the less we repeat, “Lord hear our prayer and let our cry come unto thee” implying that if we did not implore Him, He would either not know or not bother. And that He is a little hard of hearing too. But of course this is just a comforting ritual. Few of those who weekly castigate themselves as miserable sinners really think themselves as anything of the sort. By the way why do we have to travel to Lourdes to have any hope of a miracle? Is not faith as good and as valid in Leeds as in Lourdes?
Many years ago I drove the South African wife of the newly appointed Director of the Red Locust Control Service up the Rukwa escarpment. The day before we had seen a herd of hippos below in a rapidly drying muddy pool. Clearly they were going to die. We looked back and rain was falling where the hippos were. Mrs du Plessis turned to me and exclaimed, “Och they are saved! I prayed for rain and my prayer has been answered”. Did God say, “Thank you Rockalene for bringing the fate of those hippos to my attention. I don’t usually perform miracles but you pleaded so hard that I’ll make an exception. I only need to tweak the laws of physics a little so no one will notice anyway”?
Undoubtedly prayer helps in times of distress. I am sure prayer helped Terry Waite endure his years of captivity. That does not of course mean that God exists but it can be a comfort to believe that He does. But that function is limited to the personal and the negative; to enduring not acting.
I assume in these days, prayers are being offered up for an end to the depression. I would guess that we ask God to endow those who have to make decisions with courage and wisdom; also we ask God to give fortitude and succour to those who have lost their jobs, and who face hunger and distress. But how do we expect God to achieve all that? What do we expect Him to do?
God will act if at all, only through the receptive individual. Gordon Brown is a religious fellow so he may well pray that he be guided to make the right decisions in bolstering distressed banks. But if he does it will not be because we prayed that he should. Anyway God is not going to tell him, “About £50 billion for Royal Bank of Scotland should do the trick”. God might say, ”Forget about your own standing. Forget about electoral advantage. Forget about all those boastful things you said that now look so foolish. Take advice from able people who will tell you the truth as they see it. If there are things you do not understand ask someone to explain. When you have done all you can to work out what it is best to do, then do it.” If Brown hears this, it does not follow that it is God speaking although a believer would suppose it might be. If Brown causes £50 billion to be put into Royal Bank of Scotland and that proves to be a mistake he is not going to say in his defense ”God told me to do it”; at least I trust he will not.
But often the call is claimed by the receiver to be to do something specific. If that something is limited and personal some good may result with small risk of harm. If someone hears the call to become a priest or a doctor, that is likely to be to the good. Of course all action impinges on others and even the most altruistic can have unfortunate consequences. But some acts predictably have large consequences and then revelation is not a good substitute for rational thought. Bush and Blair are both devout Christians. Bush certainly prayed before deciding to invade Iraq and he thought God told him to go ahead. I assume “God” also reassured Bush that there were weapons of mass destruction. I do not question Bush’s sincerity but for me sincerity is not enough, and there most Christians would say the same. Blair has said in justification that he did what he thought was right, as though that absolved him from all responsibility for the consequences. I am sure Blair too prayed for guidance.
To do what is right it is necessary first to know what is the right thing to do. The latter is more difficult in most cases than the former. The start of working out what is right is self-knowledge. Prayer may be an aid to self-knowledge but in its ritual it seems as much a bar as a help. To acquire self-knowledge you have at least to see the need. As a start “to see ourselves as others see us”.
Prayer is currently used in many ways for many purposes. Most are relics of practices that have their roots in a time when the natural world was inexplicable and God needed to be placated. As a result most prayer seems to inconsistent with what believers now affirm about God.
May 2009