The Golden Prayer
I was talking with God about the apparent ineffectiveness of prayer, and I wanted to know what he looks at when evaluating the worthiness of a prayer. The thing he brought up that I found interesting was that some people operate under a kind of golden rule of prayer. They pray for others because they would like others to pray for them.
The theory behind this seems to be that it would be greedy to pray for yourself but that by operating in a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” sort of mode, they should get all the benefits of the greedy behavior without the downside. According to God some people have this goal without even being consciously aware of it. I pointed out that this was pretty much the same thing as one theory of how society works. The idea being that if we all just treat each other right then we’ll all be being treated right. No religion needed.
God then pointed out to me a few reasons not to discourage these people. First, while they’re praying, at the very least, they’re not causing any trouble. Second, the act of praying for other people reminds them to be good to other people. Third, the sheer repetition of it programs them and helps them to be good to other people merely out of habit.
Of course, most people have enough empathy to just be good to each other because it feels good, but for those that don’t, it’s not a bad idea to have another way to push that agenda. Just don’t go thinking that praying for people is the same thing as being good to people.
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