Prayer

Lately I've been convinced that I should be praying better. Not just more regularly, but better. Among those of us who are of the evangelical persuasion, this is the type of conviction that is usually met with a queer hybrid of admiration and sympathy. 

How mature he must be, and how serious about his walk with God. What a mess he must be, to have been a Christian so long and be struggling to pray at all. Good for him, the poor bastard.

It's true, I don't pray very often, and I don't feel bad about it either. Some might say my conscience has been seared. Maybe. Maybe I just haven't read the right book on prayer so I don't know how to do it "effectively." Part of the problem is that the structure and format of my typical prayers is typically a spectacular waste of breath, and my well-formed paragraphs, with introduction, body and conclusion, replete with innocuous theological niceties, aren't fooling even me anymore. I'm no longer interested in making terse, professional proposals, concluded with my best regards, to God. 

Sunday School students are taught that prayer is when we talk with God. Tyndale University College and Seminary students are taught that the characteristic of the one true God of Israel is that he talks with us, and only us, human beings. 

Kierkegaard talks about the unmediated relation that mankind stands in with God. God is direct for Kierkegaard, God is unmistakable, confronting and terrifying. He blesses and he damns, and as far as he can say, which is to eternity and back, the one who loved God became greater than all. Jesus tells us that whoever is not willing to hate his parents, children or spouse for his sake is fit for the kingdom of heaven (Luke 14:26)

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard's reflection on Abraham & Isaac, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the son who was promised to him. God speaks directly to Abraham, and Abraham, full of anguish, speaks directly back. This is what makes Abraham the "knight of faith," why Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness, because in the face of universal ethical obligations as a father and as a human being, Abraham believed God, who was calling him beyond the ethical, beyond the universal into what could only have been understood by any outside observer as madness. Abraham must not only violate the universal, which would have us believe it is generally poor practice to slaughter one's only son, but must also cling to God's promise that "through Isaac shall your offspring be named" (Genesis 21:12). Such a trial Kierkegaard can barely imagine, and "when I have to think of Abraham, I am annihilated."

This is unmediated relation to God, this is the kind of passionate, rapturous relation that I yearn for and that terrifies me. A part of me wants more than anything else to be subjected to Abrahamic trial, the kind that keeps me up at night, that makes me pull my hair out and fill up notebooks and tear through books and conversations in an effort to be the man I ought to be. Another part of me is comfortable right here. I can't be in unmediated, absolute relation to the Absolute just now; it's time for dinner.