Why We Don't Pray: Fear of Being Naïve

 

Sometime in December, my daughter-in-law posted a picture of a few books she was getting ready to read. One of them caught my eye and I asked her to let me know how it was. Little did I know that she had already purchased a copy to give me for Christmas!

The book is Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton. I'm only into the second chapter, yet here I am, already feeling the need to share a series of quotes from it. In fact, today and for the next seven weeks this blog will be featuring four reasons the author says we don't pray, followed by four positive twists that become reasons why we should pray.

We Don't Pray for Fear of Being Naive

The scenes of my life play out against the backdrop of a fiercely logical, intellectual city. In that environment, there is no greater sin than naivete. In a city like New York or Portland, there is nothing less fashionable than a state school grad from a Midwestern suburb fresh off the plane and wide-eyed in the big city. Innocence is terribly out of style.

Everything we interact with in this small, cramped, secular world of our own making, we have the potential of mastering. In fact, we must master it quickly in order to survive  -  the most efficient route between home and the office, how to move up the ranks at work, how to eat sushi without looking stupid, how to cut across lanes on our bicycles and live to tell the tale. And if we can't master it, we can always avoid it. I'll just change industries, avoid chopsticks, and take an Uber.

Prayer can't be mastered. Prayer always means submission. To pray is to willingly put ourselves in the unguarded, exposed position. There is no climb. There is no control. There is no mastery. There is only humility and hope.

To pray is to risk being naive, to risk believing, to risk playing the fool. To pray is to risk trusting someone who might let you down. To pray is to get our hopes up. And we've learned to avoid that. So we avoid prayer.

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Truth is...maybe "the world" considers us naive and foolish when we open ourselves up to a God we can't see. But maybe there's a reason why I'm suddenly thinking of what Jesus said in Matthew 18:3  -  “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven."