January 14, 2008



School began today, and it began light and slow, with a review of basic finance concepts in my mathematical finance class. What struck me is not so much the class (we started with a crawl) but the classroom itself. UIC has a mix of depressing Brutalist classrooms and modern office-like ones. I prefer the latter. More interesting is the fact that Eric Yiu and Scott Saflarski are in the class before me (Real Analysis)! Scott and I were part of the team that went to Tibet for short term missions.

For my economics of religion class, I'm reading a book called Economical Writing by Professor Deirdre McCloskey. Prof McCloskey is a big-name economist, and a freakin' genius, to say the least. Many professors work to become a distinguished professor in one department. She is a distinguished professor in FOUR (Economics, English, Communications, and History)! Part of her research centers around the idea of language and economics. The book may be geared to economists, but the principles apply to everybody. If conservative theologians learned to write well, maybe Richard Dawkins wouldn't have had such an edge up in the academic sphere.

Prayer is like writing. It takes much practice. There are no established rules on writing styles, but many people tend to be relativist on this. That is, they say, "My writing style is perfectly acceptable to me, just as yours is perfectly acceptable to you." There's a problem with that-- writing conveys information to others. If you convey an information ambiguously, others will misinterpret it. Any resulting fallout will be yours to enjoy. As a result, we must acknowledge that some rules must be used in writing.

Prayer takes much practice, and likewise there's no "prayer gestapo" out there telling you how you should pray... at least not if you're Protestant. There is no right way to pray. The biblical view on prayer is this: Christians are praying people, and we cannot pray to God if we're centered on ourselves. I don't think God cares about books of common prayer (even though they do help), or spontaneous "Hebrew style" prayers, but one thing is certain: we need to watch our prayer language.

There are certain rules in praying that I think we should follow. Now, following these rules are not required for salvation, but we're praying to God, aren't we? Shouldn't we watch our words just as we would if we were talking to the President of the United States? Nonetheless, I speak as a big fat hypocrite because I break some of these too. Still, they must be said, so here goes:

(1) Prayer must be substantive, not necessarily long, elegant, or both. Long prayers are boring to human ears. Even Jesus warned against useless babbling. Keep your prayer concise and to the point. Elegance is nice if you think so; and sometimes prayers have to be long (especially if you have a huge list of prayer requests), but they are not substitutes of substantivity.

(2) Avoid filler words. Filler words are substitutes for "um..." Examples: God, Lord, Jesus, just, etc. Maybe you care what you're praying about, but filler words tell everyone that you probably don't. Note: some people like me re-use certain words for a purpose. I keep saying "heavenly father" because there is a personal significance to me when calling God that. But I do keep saying "Lord" for no reason-- that needs to change. The phrase "it's all for your glory" is a common filler too-- don't use it unless you mean it!

(3) Know your audience. Hint: there's only one-- God! A good prayer comes from a good knowledge of who God is. If you think God is a huggable teddy bear, then your prayer will sound like it came from channel 46 (VH1). If you think God is a boring Grandfather from above, your prayer will sound like your boring teacher at school. If you think God is awesome beyond compare and unknowable yet humble, your prayer will sound like St. Augustine's. If your audience is not God, trust me-- we'll know.

(4) Prayer must come from your heart. Suppose Lake Michigan flooded and many people are displaced from their homes. If you don't care about the people, I'd rather you not pray for them. That's disingenous. I'd prefer that you pray that the Lord may change your heart so that you would care. Prayer is not something you do to score righteousness points (unless you're a pre-Reformation Catholic). Prayer is not something you do to give an image that you're some awesome Christian. Prayer is a reflection of the real you to God.

(5) Think before you pray. If you made an appointment to meet God in His office for a few questions, wouldn't you prepare those questions ahead of time? When we enter times of prayer, shouldn't we at least think about what to pray for and organize our thoughts a little bit? After all-- we are encountering God, aren't we? I don't suggest rushing into prayer. Think, organize, and then meet with Him.

(6) You don't have to pray out loud every time. Some people are better praying out loud. Some people are better praying silently. Don't feel pressured to pray out loud whenever we enter times like that. If everyone except you has prayed, you don't need to fill in. Likewise, for everyone else we should not expect that every good prayer warrior is a vocal prayer warrior. Instead, we should assume that not every vocal prayer warrior is a good prayer warrior.

(7) BE CLEAR AND CONCISE! There is no point praying out loud if nobody except only you can follow it. If you pray out loud, pray audibly so that we don't have to strain our ears to figure out when you'll say "amen".  Don't bring up obvious facts, because everybody knows them already. There's no point dragging prayers long with babbling.

(8) ACTS is only a guideline, not a rule! God will not strike you down if you missed A and overemphasized S. If you follow it religiously, then your prayers will become easily programmable using Java. Don't make it so! Nonetheless, ACTS is a good rule to follow, so don't dismiss it so readily. If you emphasize C for one day, don't worry. If you chronically emphasize one over the rest (especially the "S"), start changing.

(9) It's not a sin to write your prayer down and read it. If you know your writing is so much more better than your verbal communication, try writing your prayer down and reading from it! Did God prohibit prayers read from paper? Of course not!

(10) You'll never pray perfectly. Doesn't mean you shouldn't pray, but in our sinful state, we will never achieve prayer perfection. We should not worry, for the Holy Spirit helps us out! So get on your knees and pray without ceasing and without fear!

Prayer is important. If it's so, then shouldn't we be careful with the words we use in our prayer?



Here's an example. Suppose we have the following prayer request: the church has a candidate for Swahili pastor. His name is Uzi N. Apples, and he got his MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Awesome guy.

BAD: Lord, we thank you that you have a candidate for us here at WCAC for Swahili pastor. We thank you that he is well-qualified, with an MDiv from Trinity and all. Lord, we pray that you may lead our church's search committee, who was charged with finding a Swahili pastor, in asking the right questions to him and leading them to follow what you have in mind for WCAC. We pray if it be your will that he be the Swahili pastor at WCAC, you may make the road smooth for him. We pray that in all, all this is for your glory.

Why that prayer is bad (italics are problematic statements): Lord, we thank you that you have a candidate for us here at WCAC for Swahili pastor. [God knows that you're at WCAC and you need a Swahili pastor. He does not need you to remind him.] We thank you that he is well-qualified, with an MDiv from Trinity and all. [If you need to thank God that the candidate is well-qualified, then the search committee must be doing a bad job screening candidates. Not true? Then don't bring it up!] Lord, we pray that you may lead our church's search committee, who was charged with finding a Swahili pastor [God knows what your search committee's purpose is, thank you very  much.], in asking the right questions to him [so asking the right questions will yield the right pastor? If only that were true in real life...] and leading them to follow what you have in mind for WCAC [God knows this is WCAC]. We pray if it be your will that he be the Swahili pastor at WCAC, you may make the road smooth for him.[Duh... if it's God's will, will God make it impossible for him to move to WCAC? The question this statement begs is "What if it's not God's will?"] We pray that in all, all this is for your glory.[This is totally a filler. You're praying for a pastor and all of a sudden with no transition, "all for God's glory".]

GOOD: Lord, we thank you for securing candidate Apples for us. We pray that you may work in the hearts of the search committee members and Rev. Apples to determine what your plans for our church and Rev. Apples are.