Today’s “spontaneous” = tomorrow’s repetitious
When I was an Evangelical Christian, we would often engage in “spontaneous” prayer in which each person would simply pray as “the Spirit led them.” We were against rote prayers, feeling that they were “traditions of men” and broke the Lord’s command against vain and repetitious prayer (Matthew 6:7). But over time I started to realize something: our “spontaneous” prayers were awful unoriginal, each sounding like a slightly modified version of the previous prayer.
The same thing occurred with our Sunday worship services: they were intended to be spontaneous and fresh, yet over time they took on a set structure that was much like every other Evangelical service out there.
It appears that other Evangelicals have noticed that today’s Sunday services are still just as predictable as always, as can be seen in this hilarious video:
The problem with condemning repetition in prayer is that it is almost impossible to be truly spontaneous all the time, and it is human nature to feel comfortable with repetition in our lives. Jesus did not condemn repeating prayers, he condemned mindlessly repeating prayers. If you say the Hail Mary without contemplating what you are saying, then you are “babbling like the pagans” (Matthew 6:7). But if you pray the Hail Mary while contemplating the mysteries of our salvation, then your prayer is efficacious. After all, when the apostles asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he did not say, “just wing it”, but instead gave them a set prayer to say: the Our Father.
Yup, we were just repeating the same darn thing over and over. “Lord, we just pray this… Lord, we just pray that….” I heard that described once as the “just” prayer. Plus there was that feeling of pressure to come up with something that sounded good. I remember quite well. And then there was the “advice praying” – “Please help Jenny to do X.” I’m sure other “reverts” and converts could add much more.
In 30 years of life as an Evangelical before becoming Catholic, I attended services at Fundamentalist churches, Pentecostal churches, hippie churches, mega-churches–and the one thing they all had in common was a basic structure you could set your watch by. Everybody starts by singing, the offering comes roughly in the middle, etc. Spontaneity is not only a false virtue; it’s also an illusion. It’s the same thinking that says you can have 10,000 people who belong to the same local congregation, share the same values, do the same things at the same time on the same day in church, yet aren’t “religious.” Even if the ritual is the avoidance of ritual–well, it’s still a ritual.
“If you say the Hail Mary without contemplating what you are saying, then you are “babbling like the pagans” (Matthew 6:7).” This is not always true. Sometimes a person is so consumed by the current events that it is impossible to divert the mind’s attention to the meaning of the words of a formal, memorized prayer such as the Hail Mary. Nevertheless, God hears the person’s intention to “lift his mind and heart to God” – the very definition of prayer – and most assuredly hears the prayer. A perfect example of this situation is the soldier in battle who verbalizes the Hail Mary as he struggles forward under enemy gunfire – a historical case dramatized by Robert Redford’s character in the 1970′s movie, “A Bridge Too Far.” Each of us must practice charity when we write of religious subjects and do our best to encourage people in their efforts to sustain and strengthen their relationship with God, instead of condemning them for not always executing such efforts perfectly.
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Pingback by The Anchoress | A First Things Blog — May 13, 2010 @ 1:59 pmThe people made fun of in “Sunday Morning” seek a real relationship and understanding of God & Jesus. Shame on you for making fun of a living church.
“If you say the Hail Mary without contemplating what you are saying, then you are “babbling like the pagans” (Matthew 6:7). ”
That is true also when praying the psalms (as some, catholic and protestants, perhaps do).
If a psalm is just words or just an ‘happy clappy’ song as in some circles, that it is also just ‘babbling’, since it’s not ‘true prayer’ anymore, in my opinion at least.