Is There a Right Way to Pray?

An interesting article at the New York Times asks Is There a Right Way to Pray?, discusses the prayer ministry at Brooklyn Tabernacle at length, and prayer from several different perspectives.  For all my criticism – and it is just – of the NY Times and the rest of the legacy media on straight news issues, articles like this are very worthwhile.   Not just because it’s about a topic that interests me, but because it’s interesting, well-written, and fails to lecture or advocate.  It’s thought-provoking.  If only their news reporting were as good.

The agnostic reporter on the story had some interesting moments:

Cymbala instructed us to form prayer groups of two or three, stand facing one another and read the prayers out loud. I formed a threesome with the man on my left, a middle-aged political consultant from Washington, and a tall fellow on my right who had recently moved to New York from Gary, Ind. “Would you mind reading mine too?” I asked the tall man, handing him my card. “I don’t actually pray, and I don’t want Pete and Angela to get shortchanged.” He nodded with nonjudgmental solemnity, read the request and asked God to bless the couple with prosperity and health.

This transaction made me feel like a jerk. All Pete and Angela wanted was a simple prayer, and I couldn’t bring myself to offer one. I took the card back and said, “I’m having a good thought for Pete and Angela.”  I wished them happiness and wealth, in Hebrew. The two words sound alike in Hebrew and are a commonly used secular benediction. My prayer partners said, “Amen,” and we all sat down.

…. Carol is an exceptional listener, and I readily told her about my own brushes with mortality and my vague sense that learning to pray would be a good skill to have, if it didn’t require believing in God.

That’s hardly a unique sentiment – a desire to communicate with some higher power… but not a sovereign, holy God. Never that! As to that whole “good thought” concept – there are few concepts so vapid and stupid. How do you send thoughts? To whom do you send them? How does the recipient know when they arrive? If you’re busy when the thought arrives, is there a way to detain it for later review? I joke about it, but I’m appreciative of the fact that, as in Psalm 19:1 – the heavens declare the glory of God – even people who have not accepted the Lord still can’t help mimicking parts of Christianity because at some level, they know it’s right. We are hard-wired to seek the supernatural – we inherently need to be part of “something bigger” – and something in us cries out with the need to worship and pray.