I came upon this story from the Friendly Atheist podcast. It seems that the mayor of Shreveport Louisiana has decided that the best way to fight growing violence in his city is… Wait for it… prayer.
It seems that the prompt for this call was “growing violence.” According to the Website Neighborhood Scout, if you live in Shreveport, you have a one in 126 chance of becoming a victim of violent crime, compared to 1 in 182 in Louisiana overall. The site also ranked the city via its Crime Index: they ranked it 3… meaning it’s safer than three percent of U.S. cities. Compared to NYC which was ranked as 26 percent safer than U.S. cities.
Obviously, these are troubling numbers, and it makes sense that both city officials and citizens alike would want to deal with those challenges in any way they could think of. And in a “Christian” society, prayer is the low-hanging fruit. It’s kind of a go-to operation. According to KSLA News 12, this event will involve the entire city council.
The event will start at 2:30 p.m. in downtown Shreveport at Government Plaza to announce two days of prayer for the city.
A citywide prayer meeting and other prayer meetings will be held in each council district in June.
According to the Shreveport Times (which I can’t link to because they block sites that have ad blockers):
On Saturday, 5 June, each council member will go to an intersection in their council district along with faith leaders and community leaders and they will hold five to seven minutes of prayer. The intersection will be blocked off. Those Saturday prayer meetings will be held in all seven districts of the city.
Believe it or not, I’m not at all bothered by government officials praying, though many of the other commentators—including the Friendly Atheist—find it extremely troubling. What I do take issue with, is the laissez faire approach to the subject of prayer that the mayor and city council are taking. Seven minutes won’t even bake a pizza (even after the oven has been pre-heated), let alone fix crime in a city. Extraordinarily little can be accomplished in seven minutes.
But the greater irony isn’t just the amount of time (or lack of time) spent in prayer, rather the misunderstanding of how their leader, Jesus, viewed prayer in the first place. Just about anyone can do a seven-minute monologue about the ills of society and beg and plead “Superman” to swoop in and save them, but Jesus never taught that. In fact, according to Jesus, the moment you prayed for something, was the moment you volunteered to get involved. Whatever you needed God to do… was what you were meant to do.
Prayer has always been thing. Our mythology is riddled with all the creative ways humans could impel the gods to come to our assistance. This included building temples, making sacrifices, fasting, offerings… Once monotheism became a thing, we started appealing to a single god: Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah. Still, we were appealing to an entity outside of ourselves (Superman, save us…), to fix our problems—problems we have no idea how to fix—or worse, have no intention to fix.
But this is NOT the prayer that Jesus taught (or any of the other spiritual leaders).
Jesus’ overarching message was “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand/within...” AND, “WE are the Kingdom of Heaven.” The way Jesus taught us, when prayers went out to the Kingdom of Heaven, it was the Kingdom of Heaven that listened and responded. In modern terms, we pray to us, and WE respond. We make known our challenges, and WE come up with solutions.
The Aramaic word Jesus used for ‘pray’ meant, among other things, “to set a trap for God.” It’s much more complicated than it appears. It was not so much a hunting term, but a ‘trapping’ term. Jesus knew that God was moving throughout the Kingdom of Heaven and saw prayer as a way to capture it: not in apprehension, but as an acquisition. Jesus wanted to grasp God: its ideas, its thoughts, its imagination, its intentions, its ability to see beyond the problem to an actual solution.
But God is huge prey, and capturing it wasn’t going to be easy. So, Jesus (as a Jew) followed Jewish principles: he fasted, prayed, wrestled, and followed Jewish observances—all to keep the channel open so that his very being (the trap) was ready to hold onto such an overwhelming reality. Jesus intended to tap into the guidance and wisdom of this ‘captive’ to accomplish whatever he saw that the Kingdom of Heaven wanted or needed accomplished. Jesus lived his life so that he “caught” God, and God’s directions to help humanity. He didn't try to get God to do the work for him.
The purpose of prayer, as Jesus taught, is to shut up and listen. God doesn't need to hear from us. We need to hear from it. I do not pray for “God's” sake, I pray for mine. I do not pray for “crime,” I pray so that God will tell me what “I” can do to help this particular piece of the Kingdom of Heaven’s painful moment.
So, if the mayor and city council are serious about prayer, then they’re “undertaking” fasting, mediating, sacrificing, spending time away from society (in solitude) … they’re volunteering to do the work that God is going to ask them to do.
Jesus prayed in solitude, and we have no idea what his prayers were. But he also prayed in public, and, by praying in public, we make those around us aware of our decision to get involved. This is a high calling. One we had better take seriously if we’re going to wear Jesus’ name.
I don’t have a problem with public prayer, from any faith. Whether our “prayers” go up to an entity above us, or whether we’re just talking to a deeper part of ourselves: but whatever “answers” show up, WE have to do the work. We have to fine tune our mind and body so we can “set the trap.” There are likely answers, there are probably solutions, but seven minutes of rote monologues aren’t going to solve those.
If they are serious about prayer, then it’s going to be more than a seven-minute soliloquy. It’s going to involve THEM…