Sunday, April 22, 2018

Confusing Prayer to be Magic

To non-religious and the religious,

Tell me what this describes: a man dressed in a robe chants some words in Latin while reading over a book. Then his heart's desire is granted such as healing of an infirmary of another. Is it magic or is it prayer?

To be honest, the above example could be either because I only described the appearance. And this similarity is a great cause for confusion. Even though prayer and magic are completely different, the outside appearance can make it seem like they are the same. This also leads to a major misconception on the nature of prayer. Now I will not go into whether prayer or magic is real, but only explain the nature of prayer as if it is real.

You can read more on magic on J. D. Nyle's blog, but in short the idea is that magic is to accomplish your will via demons. Prayer, on the other hand, is conversing with God. Even though the petition aspect is what people are most familiar with, even that indicates the nature of prayer is not the same as magic. There is no guarantee that your request will be granted as you ask it. Look at the Lord's Prayer. The third petition is "thy will be done." It already dismisses your request. Don't forget that there is the words, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."  Therefore, we can see prayer is not scientific.

I've seen a few times people say prayer is proven by science to be ineffective. However, the nature of prayer is that people often ask to bypass science. That is why they are called miracles when they occur. As such, I heard the Catholic Church launches a large scientific investigation into whether a miracle is legitimate or not when one is reported. That is one reason why it takes them decades or even centuries to declare someone a saint, and they are looking only for two. I hear they even consult atheists in their investigation.

Magic, however, could be scientific as we often see in fantasy stories. Of course stage magic is actually science, but even the "real deal" could be considered scientific. This is because the nature is to perform "your" will. As a result, you can reproduce the effects assuming that it is true. However, it is too common that people think prayer is the same. They will just say words without paying attention to meaning and they hope what they ask will be fulfilled. It's looking at God to be a butler rather than a father.

Now how did this confusion get started? That's a tough question, but I think it's fair to say the Bible is a major source. If some Christian can explain to me the passage about "whatever you ask in my name will be given to you," that would be great. Though we can see that there was a misunderstanding even back then as people said, "Moses gave us bread from heaven," but Jesus corrected them by saying it was God, not Moses.

The attribution to Moses is perhaps the most interesting case because he is almost the only one in the Bible that shows us the true nature of prayer and miracles. When Moses does something and a miracle happened, we actually read the dialog where he talks with God and God commands him to do whatever is done. We can see small references that this is always the case throughout the Bible with all of the prophets and Jesus, but almost no one as clear as with Moses. The next time we can read an example almost as clear is Ananias healing Paul.

Does this still continue today? If you believe the stories of saints throughout the ages, then yes. Many report having actual dialog with God and wrote them down. If there is one thing that is clear, all of these people considered themselves servants of God, unifying their will with that of God. Perhaps that is why it is said that the prayer of the just man is far more powerful.

In summary, prayer is often enough confused to work like spell-casting. This can be due to the similar appearance between the two. The Bible is also a major source of confusion, but it also provides counter examples to show the true nature. Prayer is a unification of our will to God's will rather than the other way around. I hope this letter has given you a better understanding about prayer.

With love,
N. D. Moharo