On one of my favorite message boards, a person I can only describe as a fundie atheist started a thread recently to "prove" that prayer is useless.  I don't understand their urge to proselytize at all. At least Christian fundies have a reason for it - they believe that God wants them to spread the good news. (which seemd to goes against what's said in the book of Matthew - 6:5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. 6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.”-  but religions seem to choose which parts of the bible to dwell on) What does going about telling people that they're wrong about their belief in God accomplish? Maybe they get off on having the chance to show how intellectually superior they are to the poor blighted believers.

Anyway... I've been thinking about what prayers are good for, too. You probably realize from my blog posts about things like stem cells/IVF and so forth that I'm Christian. I'm pretty quiet about it, since I don't believe in organized religion and therefore have never been coached into trying to convert anyone. Some people I've known have been surprised that I'm conservative since they didn't realize that I'm at all religious. Part of the reason I'm not too vocal on the subject is that I'm not utterly certain any more that there really is a God. That's one thing I envy fundies of any stripe: their unwavering certainty. Of course, they're arrogant in that belief too, so maybe envy isn't called for.

Right, moving on. I've been thinking about prayers. I've said mine every night since I was really young. Sometimes when I'm sleepy or distracted, I find myself falling back into praying for people and pets who have been dead for half a life time. So you see it's pretty ingrained: before you go to sleep, you pray. But why? If God is omnipotent, shouldn't he know what we want? That being so, shouldn't we only have to ask once? This is the crux of what I've been thinking about lately, that we say our prayers again and again.

Part of it is that rituals are comforting. Ask any four-year-old to read them a story or play them a movie, and odds are that they're going to pick out something they know by heart. More than that, though, I think that maybe I don't still pray because I believe that God is going to answer my prayers. A lot of the things I ask for are along the nature of being better to people, being braver, the ability to follow through with things - maybe prayers are just a way to tell us what we want. Even if God doesn't need constant reminding, we often do!

So I think prayer has value, even if a study about cancer patients "proved" that people who were prayed for didn't fare better. (OTOH, the pray-ers were dictated to how often they could pray for the sick, and exactly what to pray!) Even if there's no one up there listening, it's a way to prioritize and determine what you ought to be concentrating on. Things like being braver (I specifically asked for the courage to work towards mending a relationship gone arwy, and for the other person to also make an effort) are possibly things I've had help with. But I was brave, and that relationship is on its way towards repair. Was I guided to make a move? Was my friend? I couldn't tell you for sure. Maybe it was just us on our own, but asking for it made me more aware that I wanted it, if that makes any sense.