“If we really sought truth we would begin slowly and laboriously to divest ourselves one by one of all our coverings of fiction and delusion: or at least we would desire to do so, for mere willing cannot enable us to effect it.” Thomas Merton, from “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”
Louis C.K., an abrasively reflective standup comedian, has pointed out that white people have to construct problems and crises to cover over the devastating truth of having an overwhelmingly comfy existence. As a beneficiary of white male privilege, I can appreciate his remarks. In the grand scheme of history, I have never confronted the magnitude of difficulty that befell the vast majority our human ancestors. Pestilence, famine, tribal warfare, drought, sytematic persecution, discrimination, religious violence and hunger are alien concepts to me. I confront them only as newspaper headlines. If I even look around the globe today, the global nexus of journalism opens my western mind to distant moral epidemics that I cannot even contemplate. Oppression of women, the poor and racial minorities around the world is simply staggering.
I set up this rather general backdrop because therein lies my spiritual conundrum. How do I pray before God, taking into account the rather miniscule weight of my problems? Let me unpack that further. When I come before God, in my mind and heart, I find myself in a tension that is especially acute to my generation. Being apart of the cohort that immediately followed Generation X (I just turned 30), I find myself in the first wave of Americans that can expect to be less well off than our parents. The future is unsure for many of us. Americans that graduated from highschool in the last decade and a half are entering into a workforce less stable then we expected. Our college diplomas don’t carry the freight they once did. We find ourselves in a general milieau of fear and uncertainty. It makes one wonder about what level of urgency we should be experiencing. We are, after all, still better off than the majority of the world. All of these social and material matters have spiritual implications. Trusting in God looks different when you can’t afford medical insurance. Taking Jesus’ advice to “Not worry about tomorrow…” poses a special challenge when you have two kids and an empty cupboard.
So in the light of the plight of so many Americans who are just now beginning to face the possibility of a future that is less sure: how do we speak our experience of crisis to God, and still remember that our pressures are minor when weighed on the scales of human history? From what posture should a person pray when they can’t afford their next car payment, and still acknowledge that they live in a world where simply owning a car should be considered an exceptional luxury? How does one wrestle with the barbed observations of Louis C.K.—Namely that one has to be affluent to even qualify for the grade of situational troubles we find ourselves in (e.g. A laid off father can’t afford to put his son in a select soccer league next season). Knowing that more and more families can’t take their kids to the hospital, even praying about my sinus infection feels preposterous. But I can’t afford to go either, hmmm.
We are the most pampered demographic in human history, and yet we find ourselves facing challenges that (in light of our narrow experience) seem daunting. How do we pray in desperateness, and acknowledge our privilege?
In the entries that follow, I don’t plan on finding a satisfying answer. But I would like to start the conversation, and think about how we pray within crises, great and small. If you feel comfortable, share your own story.
Comments
It seems to me that this "crisis" that Generation Y (I do believe that is the generation following Generation X) is undergoing will be one that teaches young Christians, through experience, just what posture is appropriate during times of crisis. Coming from a less than wealthy background, I can say that nothing is as enriching and as necessary than a healthful bout of suffering. My stepmother once told me a fundamental difference in the ways Americans pray versus the way Latinos pray--"instead of asking God to remove the weight of suffering from our shoulders, we ask for the strength to see such suffering through." This generalization does not deal specifically with Americans and Latinos at large--it speaks more of a mindset that overcomes racial boundaries and seeps instead into class divisions, where mentalities morph as a collar turn from a dingy brown, to a sweat stained blue, and finally to a bleach and fitted designer white. Rainer Maria Rilke tells us "to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." That's what suffering does, and for those few lucky enough to stumble upon God's faithfulness, the suffering and faith intertwine to become the modern day cross and mark of the believer--the ability to suffer and trust that God is faithful in his promise that we will make it through.
Wow, great insights. I'm glad that you surfaced class as an important category. I wish that Louis C.K. had emphasized that his observations were really more class oriented than racially contained. Thanks for working in Rilke--well placed.
Besides, suffering is suffering in whatever shape it may come. No use in comparing, because we all undergo terrible trials when the time is appropriate for the each of us, and those who never suffer really don't come out victorious--they lose. So when coming before God, just ask for the strength to see it through, to expand in compassion, to remember that thankfulness exists at all times, especially when solidarity with most of the suffering world is achieved.
The fact that we do live in "the most pampered demographic in human history" makes it harder to scrape by in the society on a limited fortune. Having a car is almost a necessity in the USA. You can also look at medical bills and medicines and how absurd the prices are on something that certainly is a necessity. The main question that arises is then should we be able to live comfortably, knowing that others all around us are not enjoying the same privileges, and in fact suffering everyday.
Praying seems to become a self-concerning when we our by ourselves and when we do pray for others how ofter do we do it by just remembering whomever. It seems that it is usually when the person of suffering is fresh on the mind that we will pray for them.
When praying for our own suffering we need to definitely be concerned for others out there, but that does not mean we shouldn't pray as God would rather us talk to him than not at all.
Having a car in the USA today is no more a necessity than it was 200 years ago, yet people survived and even thrived without automobiles then. Many things that we consider necessities are no more than luxuries we've grown accustomed to.
I didn't say people don't thrive and didn't thrive without cars but I am saying that if you can't make it to work on time or school on time no one's gonna feel sorry for you.
Cars were probably a poor example from the start though.
Cars aren't a poor example at all. They're a subset of transportation. And you're quite right: it is impossible to be on time to school or work, or even to get food, without transportation. This was not true 200 years ago, but it is certainly true in America today. Transportation is not a luxury: most people, if deprived of it, will find themselves destitute, even homeless.
Appeals to the state of things 200 years ago as somehow normative are fundamentally flawed because they do not recognize the constructed nature of socio-economic reality. When most people live on farms and grow their own food, transportation is not a necessary element of self-sustenance. However, when most people don't even know how to grow food, and would probably starve if forced to do so, and their self-sustenance is a product of wage labor, and labor sites are dispersed throughout wide-scale transportation networks, the situation is very different. Without transportation, education and labor both become essentially impossible activities. And without labor, there is no means to acquire the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Since transportation is a prerequisite to the recognized essentials, transportation must therefore be added to the list of essentials, in the Modern context.
On horror films:
"Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it."
- Little Bee, Chris Cleave
I for one am grateful no one else knows what I pray about than God. Certainly, comparatively, my praying is largely self-centered. I like what Orinoco said about suffering as a level field - we only understand suffering empirically. Suffering has individualized value because for each person, it might be "the worst it's ever been," even if to another, it's not that bad. I think this is an important point because it seems to me that personal suffering reveals the suffering of others. I remember the first time I realized that everyone has something to be hurting over, and that no one is really doing "absolutely great." It seems that those who suffer, or have suffered, more quickly respond compassionately to the suffering of others. There's a connection there, some kind of bond. A shared experience. But, I sympathize with your feelings of praying about the burden of my luxuries when there are people all around me who are barely surviving. I don't know how to reconcile that.
As an atheist, I do not know much about praying at all. I do know, however, what it is like to see suffering all around when I live such a pampered lifestyle. To see mass genocides and starvation occurring on the same planet that I am able to live so comfortably in is something that I have to come to terms with in some way. Perhaps what makes this knowledge even tougher to deal with is the fact that I could help many of those people who so desperately need it. It seems as if American Society, regardless of class as Americans (even the poorest among us) make much more money than the world around us, has bred a generation that worships materialism far more than it could ever worship a God. I could only imagine that the first step towards reconciling this problem of praying from the posture of privilege, as a society at least, would be to shift the worship from materialism to a sense or being of higher morality.
One thing I think that an atheist and Christian could agree on is that any Christian community/theology/methodology/social culture that is producing believers that prefer driving an Escalade than housing a single mother in their spare bedroom (not that this is an either/or choice) has somehow failed in cultivating people who are "dying to self," "considering others before themselves," or have seriously contemplated Jesus "Woe to you who are rich." That, I find thoroughly noncontroversial. Not that I fare well by the standards of Jesus' teachings--which is exactly the starting place of my interrogation (my self-obsession).
Good to hear from you MFLO--miss ya.
I completely agree that any society that wishes to consider itself a virtuous one must value living things above luxury (as owning an Escalade could not be considered essential), which sadly this nation fails to do far too often. I'm glad you brought up the point that Jesus explicitly said "Woe to you who are rich." I feel that this is disregarded by many people in the Christian faith, as this is often met with a "Oh, there's no way Jesus was talking about ME. I mean, look at (rich guy), he has much more than I do." Which can be done over and over again by everyone (except Bill Gates) in order to avoid the truth that Jesus is calling them to give up their material possessions. This may be the largest problem with American Christianity, that it must be on the believer's terms, rather than on Jesus' terms. A blogger brought up an interesting point in this article: http://relijournal.com/religion/theism-versus-atheism/
that describes how many people pick and choose which parts of their religion they want to believe in, so that it would not interfere with their daily life. I have to wonder if that is not what religion is all about (I may not be the expert on this), the idea that the believer must be pushed to do things that they would not normally think of doing, pushing them out of their comfort zone in order to obtain a higher calling, a higher sense of morality?
Also - miss you too man
It's not the same without you here.
This guy belongs teaching in a small christian high school, helping to guide young republicans away from the darkside!
This guy belongs teaching in a small christian high school, helping to guide young republicans away from the darkside!
One of my non-churchy friends really HATES it when people pray for things that she thinks God doesn't really need to lend a hand in. For example, we watch The Amazing Race together and she always yells at the contestant who prays during a task, "Oh, LORD, help me take this VCR apart and put it back together so I can still have a chance to win a million dollars."
Before watching that show week after week I had never really thought about how we, as a privileged people, pray about EVERY little thing that comes our way. I hope Jesus intercedes for us and sifts our prayers for the important stuff and lets the rest be heard and cast aside.
I guess I feel this way about athletes who thank God for bringing them a victory, because it is pretentiousness veiled in piety. Why do you assume that God cares that your team beats the other team (which probably had a few praying members as well). I was a competitive athlete for a short time and remember having to ask myself before going to a tournament: "Do I even want to believe that God cares about how well I beat some person in an arbitrary form of competition?" And time and again the answer was 'No: I don't want to believe that God is that capricious.'
It is perhaps a temptation to believe that we ought to pray only about the weightier matters of life and that when it comes to rather minute matters, God might prefer that we simply handle that on our own. However, that misinterprets prayer as something we do in order to get something done. Biblically, prayer has perhaps more to do with helping the "pray-er" learn dependence on God than, in fact, getting something done. We could quibble about what prayer actually accomplishes vis a vis the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God, but it seems clear that God wants us praying, all the time, about all our life. Not because our "incantation" will somehow turn the divine power our way, but because God knows as we learn to trust in him our lives start to take on more and more of his good qualities.
I appreciate all of the comments mentioned here. Something that bubbled up in my mind after reflecting on some of the statements here is that the Jewish/Christian scriptures has a rich tradition of bringing attention to ways in which spiritual practices can be fervent, sincere but, also, reveal the conceit and social narrowness of the religious community's concerns. "For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’" (Isaiah 58:2-3). We tend to read texts like this, especially as Protestants, as condemnation of a legalistic obsession with ritualism when, in the context (at least of Isaiah 58), we see that their devotional practices are a projection and manifestation of their self-concern and negligence to perceiving ways in which they are the beneficiaries of injustice (rather than its victims).
I think Jesus, in many ways, continues this general trajectory which we read as a condemnation of moralistic legalism but (as many scholars are pointing out) is better understood as critique of a spirituality built around narcissistic and self-promotional assumptions about God, and Israel's life with God. Matthew 6:6-8 (as one anecdotal example) never addresses the content of prayers to be avoided but the motives and desires that precede one's posture of praying ("Babbling on and on to be heard").
Thanks for sharing.
Coming from a background of brokenness, which lead to my own peril and further brokenness, taught me that my own reliance on “self” was never the way out of the hole I dug myself in. One’s suffering may be different than another, however, to assume a position of guilt while praying, while relying on God to carrying you through your difficulty (even if it is a simple sinus infection), places God on a level He isn’t meant to be placed at. “He couldn’t possibly care about my problems…they are so petty”. Who are we to assume that God does not care about our problems, whether they are large or small? This may sound a bit Pollyanna here, but I do believe He does, and He expects prayer from His children. He sees the suffering of those in Egypt, and sees the suffering in the suburbs. Does the suffering pale by comparison in His eyes? I don't know. I lived guilt-ridden for many years, and it wasn’t until I learned the source of that guilt that I realized its proper placement. I believe God uses guilt to convict wrong- doing: to sway His children away from sin. However, once confession and a contrite heart reveal themselves, guilt should no longer have a prominent place in a Christian’s life. Satan uses guilt. If guilt is keeping us from praying about our own personal needs, because they are “petty by comparison”, Satan is successfully forcing a wedge between God and ourselves. I think there must be a balance between compassion for those in crisis and our own relationship with God.
What is wrong with someone having a difference in opinion than you, Jay Goin? You believe that our school is the "Walmart" of private schools. You are an egotistical hypocrite. God will deal with you in his own way. God punishes those who think they are better than others just because they are financially better off. I will pray for you!
I'll be interested in seeing what you come up with ... especially if it's not a satisfying answer.
M Wms,
I can assure you it will be dissatisfying: especially to me, as the answers to the difficult questions tend to be
Thanks for reading,
SMWeathers
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