Pray for Pope Leo

 But for what, exactly?

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

 

A friend endorses CBT—Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. The idea, he says, is that “it identifies self-defeating beliefs and cognitive distortions that maintain depression, anxiety, addiction, etc. And it replaces these beliefs with more accurate, realistic and positive ones.”

But note the assumption here: that the patient/client’s depressing thoughts are wrong, or unrealistic. That is not a fair assumption. We should really expect that the average person has an unrealistic bias towards optimism—people tend to believe what they want to be true. Nobody wants bad things to happen.

There is a theory called “depressive realism.” Some studies that suggest depressed people are better than others at predicting future events, and more realistic in understanding their inability to control events. George Orwell and Winston Churchill both considered their chronic depression their superpower allowing them to face the hard truths others wouldn’t. 

This seems to me a serious problem for CBT. First, it may be convincing some poor patient to walk off a cliff, figuratively speaking, having convinced himself is not really there. 

Second, it may be encouraging him not to make necessary changes in his situation, assuring him that everything is fine as is. So trapping him in his mental illness. 

Third, it is objectively immortal to encourage another to lie to himself, given that truth is of transcendental value. 

Fourth, a perceptive patient is likely to see this flaw in the treatment, and the consolation will not work from the start. It will only deepen their despair. Just like many find it impossible to be moved by a John Denver song. 

“Sunshine almost always makes me high...”

Prayer, by contrast, gives reasons for authentic optimism: God’s in control. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

My friend is impressed by studies that show CBT actually works. He quotes AI: “evidence-based methods like CBT are proven to help with various mental health issues, often working as well as medication or even better in combination with it.”

That last clause is the key: “success” is measured as “working as well as medication.” There is decent evidence that psychiatric medication does not work, so this actually suggests CBT and other “evidence-based” psychotherapies do not work.

Following is a passage quoted from an unpublished manuscript of mine:

Trevor Turner writes, in 2004, “recent critiques have shown that recovery and readmission rates in schizophrenia before 1950 were no different and that antipsychotic agents might even do more harm than good.”  A 2013 study by Harrow and Jobe concludes “there is very little systematic evidence for the long-term benefits of antipsychotics. There is even some longitudinal data suggesting the opposite.”  Discouragingly, Harrow and Jobe say that “in our longitudinal studies, the sample of schizophrenia patients who were untreated for many years showed significantly better outcomes than did those on antipsychotics.”  An Alberta Hospitals study in 1978 produced similar results. 

Doubts have surfaced for antidepressants as well. Studies indicate a 10% improvement in symptoms above placebo for the SSRIs, the “Prozac”-like medicines currently favoured.  But as Horowitz and Wilcock point out, this is not a clinically significant result.  Moncrieff and Kirsch point out that, given the criteria used, a sleeping pill would have scored as well.  “Longitudinal follow-up studies,” they add, “show very poor outcomes for people treated for depression both in hospital and in the community.”  

... Moncrieff and Kirsch conclude that “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors have no clinically meaningful advantage over placebo. Antidepressants have not been convincingly shown to affect the long-term outcome of de-pression or suicide rates.”  In his 2011 book The Emperor’s New Drugs, Kirsch concludes, “When we analyzed all of the data ―those that had been published and those that had been suppressed―my colleagues and I were led to the inescapable conclusion that antidepressants are little more than active placebos, drugs with very little specific therapeutic benefit, but with serious side effects.”

Prayer is better—it gives reason for optimism.

On Prayer

“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’

2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins,
   for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

5 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your persistence he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

9 ‘So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

11 ‘Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’”

“ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

This familiar passage of the Bible implicitly condemns both atheists and those who call themselves “spiritual seekers.”

If God will reveal himself to whoever seeks him, it is not possible to honestly be an atheist. One is in denial. One also cannot claim to have long been seeking and not found. 

I submit that this is so. I say this although there was a time I too might have called myself a seeker, not a committed Catholic.

But that was actually out of fear. I recall I actually prayed that God send me no miracle, did not appear to me in any obvious way. Because if he did, I would fear I had gone mad. 

And getting past that fear felt like jumping off a cliff.

Others fear that accepting God would mean a heavy obligation on our part. We could no longer do what we want. We would need to feel guilty for things we have done. This seems to be the case for Jordan Peterson. I can remember it being the case for me. I can remember reading Jesus’s promise, “my yoke is light,” and not believing it. Fasting, abstaining from sex outside marriage, forgiving enemies… 

It is not that we think there is no God. It is that we are, like Adam and Eve, hiding in the bushes.

Usually, when you speak to an atheist, it is not that they don’t think God exists. They are angry with God. Why does he allow the innocent to suffer? Why does he not give me what I ask for? Why is he such a Fascist? This is abundantly clear of Christoper Hitchins.

You cannot be angry at someone you believe does not exist.

Given that he does exist, why indeed does God not instantly answer prayer? If he is good, why doesn’t he give us whatever we want?

Jesus explains by analogy: God is like a parent being petitioned by his son.

We immediately should understand that the parent knows better than the child; what children ask for is not always in their own best interest. They want to stay up all night and eat ice cream. God similarly knows better than we do what is good for us.

So why bother to pray at all?

Not for “stuff.” There is nothing wrong with praying for our daily bread, but beyond that, stuff is just candy.

But God wants us to pray, and to be persistent in prayer, to “annoy” God with the frequency of our prayer—like someone knocking on a door at midnight.  Not to allow God ever to ignore us.

Which really means, not to allow ourselves ever to ignore God.

And Jesus, in the last quoted verse, tells us exactly what prayer is really for: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The thing we should pray for, and what prayer is there to obtain for us, is the Holy Spirit, the abiding voice of God, “who has spoken through the prophets.”

And with this, I aver, comes true peace and meaning. All else is just candy and childish toys.

On Praying by Rote Like a Trained Seal. Not.

 

My Protestant pals, including friend Xerxes, generally scorn traditional prayers. They argue that people only say them by rote. They hold that real prayer must be self-composed, to express the emotion of the moment. Like talking to a friend.

For many years, I accepted this basic premise. I was educated for nine years, after all, in Protestant departments of Religion.

But what was the upshot of this belief? That I stopped praying. 

Too often, I did not feel I had anything in particular to say. And then, in those desperate situations, when I really did feel the need for God’s help, I was often too agitated in mind to form a coherent prayer.

Was I to petition God daily for some favour? This has never made sense to me. It sounds too much like a spoiled child, convinced that they are special, always saying “gimme, gimme, gimme.”

Surely God is in command, and he will give us what is best. And this must also go then for others. “Pray for the church?” Isn’t that presumptuous? God is already looking after the church. It all sounds like “my will be done, Lord, not thine.”

Of course, there are prayers of gratitude. Spontaneous prayers of gratitude suit me fine. But sometimes you are not feeling grateful, and it would just be lying to God. Spontaneous questioning of Go9d, arguing with God, also seems fine to me.

A couple of evenings ago, I read a sentence by Pope Benedict XVI, written when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, which magically crystallized my misgivings about spontaneous prayer. Benedict is good at that. He wrote, without any special reference to prayer, “The mark of the Antichrist is the fact that he speaks in his own name.”

That has the ring of truth.

Especially to me, because it is just what I always tell my composition students—teaching writing is my specialty. My first word of advice is always that the self must disappear. It must not come from you, must not be about you, and must not be in your name. It comes from some divine beyond, it is about the story, and it is for the reader.

When you compose your own prayer, it seems to me, it is the same principle. You are making it about you: your thoughts, your feelings, your particular situation, your skill with language and your understanding of theology. Perhaps also about God, but firstly about you. Praying alone, you are saying “Over here! Look at me, God.” Praying aloud in public, you are saying “listen to me, everyone.” 

You are the antichrist.

Compare reciting a rote prayer. The self, your particular concerns, disappear. The prayer is saying itself. Perhaps the finest example of this is the “Jesus Prayer”: “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You can say it under your breath ceaselessly; no matter the tumult about you. That is the intent. And the Bible tells us to do as much. See  1 Thessalonians 5:17.

And when you pray the “Our Father,” you are speaking the words of Jesus, of God himself. Do you really claim you can do better than he can at composing a prayer? Especially when he expressly told us, “this is the way to pray.”

When you say the “Hail Mary,” similarly, you are speaking the words of the Angel Gabriel, and of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. Do you want to claim you can do better than the Bible, the Word of God?

Even in the case of traditional prayers not from the Bible, you are benefitting from something written by a great mind, preserved for its truth and beauty by fellow souls throughout the ages. The “Salve Regina” dates from the 11th century, the “Glory Be” from the 2nd century, the Nicene Creed from the 4th century; and the Apostles’ Creed is earlier. You are reciting it in communion with all the faithful souls in heaven.

On Just Repeating Prayers Like a Trained Seal

 

Friend Xerxes, former left-wing political columnist, has eschewed politics. I suspect this is because he realized that the left-wing position has become indefensible. Why fasten himself to a dying animal? His latest column is about prayer. In a piece titled “Getting Beyond the Rituals,” he expresses the common Protestant objection to rote prayers and ritual generally. Instead, you are supposed to speak and do from the heart.

I was seduced when younger by this dismissal of rote prayer—after all, surely your heart can’t be in it? And the inevitable result was that I stopped praying. 

“What deadens us most to God's presence,” Xerxes’s source argues, “is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought… including the chatter of spoken prayer.”

Here “spoken prayer” is being conflated, Improperly, with rote prayer. St. Theresa of Avile would agree that “mental prayer” is better than praying out loud. But that, as the quotation goes on to make clear, is not what Frederick Beuchner, Xerxes’s source, means.

“I keep trying, and once or twice I have been conscious, but not conscious of anything, not even of myself. I have heard a stillness that encloses all sounds, stilled the way whiteness encloses all colors, stilled the way wordlessness encloses all words. I like to believe that once or twice, at times like those, I have bumbled my way into at least the outermost suburbs of the Truth that can never be told but only come upon, that can never be proved but only lived for and loved.”

And my Catholic objection is this: this is not prayer. He is necessarily not conscious, as he claims, of “God’s presence”: he is “not conscious of anything, not even of himself.” Whatever is happening, this allows for no personal relationship with God, which is what prayer is supposed to be about.

Moreover, this amounts, by his own admission, to praying only once of twice in your life. 

In other words, it is an alibi for forgetting about God.

“The Truth that can never be told?” A Truth beyond words? Jesus is the Word; and he is the only path.

I recently came across a map on the internet that sought to divide Europe into two zones: religious Europe and atheist Europe. I presume they had no particular religious axe to grind, but the line they drew was almost exactly the line between Catholic Europe and what had been, since the Reformation, Protestant Europe.

Being filled with the Spirit, being inspired, is great, but it does not stick around. And, without ritual, you are left with nothing. And no way to get it back.

Wherever Two or More of You Are Gathered in My Name

 

Friend Xerxes wonders why Jesus had only twelve apostles.

The Buddha had ten.

Timothy Leary, at s lecture I attended, claimed that all social changes are accomplished by small groups who all know one another.

One thinks of the Beats: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy, Burroughs, Snider. Or the little group of folksingers in Greenwich Village circa 1960. Or the Inklings. Or the group of friends who, along with me, built the Editors’ Association of Canada.

It must always work this way, because in a larger group, the ways of the world begin to take precedence. The germ of any true vision is not enough to sustain so many when the idea is clearly counter to the larger consensus. For the larger consensus will always be hostile to any such destabilizing insight.

This is why it is important that scripture is almost always misquoted as “wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I with them.”

This misquote implies that Jesus is not with you when alone in prayer, and leaves you when you stand against the group, or your society. Making Oskar Schindler, Nelson Mandela, or Jesus himself, the bad guys.

The actual line, from Matthew, is

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

If the individual alone is thus excluded, so is the Catholic mass.

The passage refers to this phenomenon, that only a small group can stand against the world. An individual will be crushed; a larger group will be assimilated.

Which, incidentally, is why attendance at mass is not enough. The church is there to administer the sacraments, but everyone needs a prayer group.

Those Beyond Prayer

 

John at the Jordan

If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.

We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin; but the one begotten by God he protects, and the Evil One cannot touch him. 

We know that we belong to God, and the whole world is under the power of the Evil One. 

We also know that the Son of God has come and has given us discernment to know the one who is true. And we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 

Children, be on your guard against idols.

This passage from the First Epistle of John, the first reading at last Sunday’s mass, is challenging.

First, it says “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin.” This seems to contradict the Catholic position that we are all sinners. If this is so, if Christians cannot sin, there ought to be no need for the sacrament of confession.

Second, it says you need not pray for those guilty of grievous sin. Aren’t we supposed to pray for everyone? Aren’t we supposed to love our enemy, and seek the best for them?

Third, it affirms that the true follower of Christ is capable of telling who else is and is not true. So much for the popular doctrine that we are not to judge, not “be judgemental.” Apparently we can judge, reliably.

Fourth, it declares that “the whole world is under the power of the Evil One.” Surely a surprise to any “Hallelujah Chorus” or “prosperity gospel” Christians. And anyone who thinks they can live a Christian life reconciled to the world.

These issues are interconnected. 

As to the first point, other translations render “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin” as “will not continue to sin,” “will not persist in sin.” The literal translation from the Greek is “not continues to sin.” This can be read not as meaning we will not sin once we believe in God, or that we will not persist in sin, which is to say, develop a vice. Because a vice, a kind of addiction, surrenders a part of our will, the vices are often conceived of as independent spirits, demons. Hence, developing a vice counts as “the Evil One touching us,” getting his hands on us. When we develop a vice, we “belong” to the Evil One, and no longer to God. 

This fits with the distinction between ordinary sins and “deadly sins” in the reading (the Greek is literally “sin unto death”). When we pray for someone who has sinned, we are presumably praying for their soul, that they do not fall into vice. If they have fallen into vice, there is no more we can do.

The vices are, after all, called the “Seven Deadly Sins.” They are deadly because they are settled habits. They both persist, in principle unto death, and are the death of the soul. If they can ever be escaped, it takes a miracle.

If this seems harsh, it seems to be the attitude of John the Baptist in the Gospel. He calls to repentance: and the people come out into the desert. If they do, expressing thereby their repentance, he washes them of their sins. 

But not everyone.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

They are not welcome to repent. Either it is an impossibility, or else it offends divine justice.

And John the Baptist seem fully capable of judging them on sight.

This is also the obvious sense of Jesus dividing mankind onto sheep and goats, and condemning goats to the eternal fire.

Consider now the last words of this passage, “Children, be on your guard against idols.”

Vices, because they take over the will, are demons. They are idols. When you develop a vice, you have surrendered your will to some idol.

Modern Prayers

 

Durer, Praying Hands

When I was young, and in the umbra of Vatican II, I always felt hounded by the demand that we must pray extemporaneously instead of by rote. That always felt wrong to me. Sometimes you felt like it, but most often you did not. So were you just not supposed to pray? Or be insincere to God himself?

There is great power in set prayer formulae. It is the power we recognize as soon as we call it a “mantra.” With rote prayer, it is possible to pray without ceasing.

Of course, there is a place as well for speaking to God as a friend; when one has a particular problem or question to pose.

Both forms of prayer have their value. 

Friend Xerxes recently objected to the “Our Father,” and suggested instead several modern alternatives.

His core complaint is that it encourages an “unthinking” idea of God as an “all-knowing all-seeing old-man-in-the-sky.” A concept that he finds untenable.

I can’t agree with his basic premise, that the “Our Father” depicts God as an “old man in the sky.” The sky is not mentioned. It says he is in heaven. Is that “the sky”?

Where is heaven? Jesus, who gave us the words of the prayer, tells us: “the kingdom of heaven is within (or among) you.”

At the same time, the physical heavens as metaphor is valuable to prevent supposing God is only “in here,” and not also “out there,” pervading the cosmos. He is not merely some Jungian archetype.

“I have trouble,” Xerxes continues, “with God as the hyper-engineer who keeps everything running, who fixes things we can’t fix for ourselves, who feeds us sliced bread and steers us out of temptation.”

But that is not the Christian God either. The prayer says “Our Father.” Doesn’t that sound more like a mother?

Like a father, he allows us our free will, and expects things of us. He is not going to do everything for us; he is judgmental, not unquestioningly supportive like a mother.

The modern prayers Xerxes cites as preferable to the “Our Father” all strip out this masculine imagery.

For example:

“Holy One, holy one-ness, in us and around us and beyond us,”

--removes both masculinity and personhood.

I’m with William Blake on this: humanity cannot conceptualize anything greater than a perfect human. Anything else is less, and an inadequate image of God. You care more for your father than for the number one.

“Separate us from the temptations of power, and draw us into your community.”

Why power? This suggests that power is the only motive for sin.

“the empowerment around us,”

Again power--praying for power. This sounds like an impious obsession with power. Which, I may say, defines postmodernism.

“and the celebration among us, now and always. Amen.”

This is a significant change, because the original, the “Our Father,” says nothing about celebration, let alone celebrating “always.” Instead, it implies that something is wrong with the world: that God’s will is not yet done.

To assert that all is right with the world is callous towards the suffering. And unquestioningly supportive of the powerful.

“O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us.”

This loses the two essential points of Christianity: that God loves us, and that we are to love God.

That God is Love requires understanding God as Trinity, because love is a Trinity. Love cannot exist without Lover and Beloved.

To attempt to conceive love as a pure abstract entity is to eliminate love from the conversation. Being in love with love is callous, the opposite of love.

“May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings.”

Connectedness is only half of the equation; this is a monist rather than a Christian sentiment. It would require that all we do must flow from our deep connection with the devil, not to mention the Mafia, Nazis, the KKK, or animal parasites and predators, without discrimination.

Xerxes concludes with a passage from a book, Richard Wagamese’s “Embers,” which he proposes might be ideal:

“I am the trees alive with singing.

I am the sky everywhere at once.

I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations.

I am light everywhere descending.

I am my heart evoking drum song.

I am my spirit rising.

I am my prayers and my meditation, and I am time fully captured in this now.

I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day.”

In simplest terms, “I am God.”

This again is monist, and Advaita Vedanta, not Christian. Identifying God with self is moving backwards on the Christian (or Buddhist) path. That is what Lucifer did, and what Adam and Eve did.

Lead us not into evil.

Amen

The Unjust Magistrate

He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray and not give up, saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God and didn’t respect man. A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ He wouldn’t for a while; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’ ” 

The Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says. Won’t God avenge his chosen ones who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

This is what a parable looks like: no names, and shocking. God is blasphemously compared to an unjust judge. The parable implies that He can be worn out, get tired; nonsensical for a perfect being.

As usual, the story is actually saying the opposite of what it seems to say on superficial reading. It is all in the last line.

It seems to say God will answer prayer. It is really explaining why God does not answer prayer.

Unlike the unjust judge, God does not disdain mankind and want to be rid of us. Instead, he loves us. The parable illustrates that, if he easily gives us what we want, we will probably go away and forget about him. The last thing he wants us to do is go away and forget about him.

So he will present us with problems and fail to give us what we ask, for the sake of deepening the relationship. To progress, we must learn to be grateful, and to continue the conversation, even when he fulfills our wishes.

Why God Seems Hard of Hearing

“Mindfulness,” originally a Buddhist concept, has of late become popular. But I think just about everybody has it wrong. Buddhist authorities it has to do primarily with engaging the memory. Yet everybody in the West thinks it has to do with emptying your mind of thoughts and concentrating on your breathing. So it is described in a text I am currently teaching.

Some Buddhist source or sources no doubt said as much. But this is probably a joke, of the sort Buddhism loves: a koan. It is intrinsically impossible to empty the mind of thoughts. If one could, the result would self-evidently not be “mindfulness.” And it is hard to see great spiritual progress in concentrating on a process that, left to itself, is spontaneous.

Yet real mindfulness is important, in Christianity as much as Buddhism. Real mindfulness is learning to notice little tears in the matrix of shared delusions in which we usually live; little discrepancies that suggest something more is going on. The prime example of a truly mindful individual would be Sherlock Holmes.

Last Sunday’s gospel offers an example. The disciples ask Jesus how to pray. He responds with the Lord's Prayer. But also with something strange that nobody seems to notice. See if you spot it.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test."
And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend
to whom he goes at midnight and says,
'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey
and I have nothing to offer him,'
and he says in reply from within,
'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.'
I tell you,
if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake
when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

Did you get that?

Jesus compares God to a lukewarm friend who is too busy and too tired to answer an urgent appeal. And he suggests irritating Him to get what you want.

It is funny as Hell, and nobody seems to notice. Simply because it does not fit preconceptions.

True mindfulness notices such things.

It is not a flattering portrait of God. It does not suggest a God who is Love. God, omnipotent, cannot be too busy or too tired to answer the door. And because he is busy with his children? Who are his children? Isn’t that us?

But perhaps this is to trigger the realization: isn’t it absurd to ask God for stuff in the first place? As Jesus points out elsewhere, God, all-knowing and all-loving, necessarily knows our needs, and will always give us whatever is best for us.

So despite the apparent literal sense of the Our Father, prayer is not about petitioning God. That would be absurd, like seeing God in the grumpy and tired acquaintance we have disturbed in his bed.

The point of prayer is to develop a personal relationship with God. As William Blake observed, man cannot really comprehend anything greater than a perfect human person. This, therefore, is how we must understand God. God is not a coin machine: insert your prayer, and out pops what you want. That would not be a Supreme Being, but a being less than ourselves.

This is a poignant response to those—and there are many—who maintain that they cannot believe in God, because at one time or another, feeling in desperate need, they prayed for something, and they did not get it. The heavens were silent.

In addressing God as “Father,” and using the familiar, childlike term, “Abba,” Jesus more broadly compares our relationship with God to that of a child to a parent. Yes, if a child asks their father for a fish, they will not be given a snake. On the other hand, they may not be given a fish. Perhaps instead they will be told to eat their vegetables.

We are children, and God is our true parent, He knows better than we what is good for us. He may give us a special treat at times to show his love, but we must not expect or demand this. A good parent does not spoil his child.

Jesus promises that, if we persist in prayer, we “will receive.” But notice that Jesus does not say we will get what we pray for; we will get “the Holy Spirit.”

And that is the point of prayer. If we persist in it daily, as the words of the Lord’s Prayer imply, we become no longer an occasional friend who knocks loudly on the door in time of need, but one of the true children in the inner rooms.