Too many are bullied away from real prayer
5.29.2012 | All Blog Posts, Contemplation and Meditation, How to Pray
The Shadow of the Reformation :: A Short Series on Why Protestants Have Trouble With Prayer
Part Nine (Conclusion)
Of course, there are plenty of Protestant Christians who have experienced some taste of the Divine and who have found ways into stillness before God. But the shadowy legacy of the Protestant Reformation and its interaction with the Enlightenment meant that the way to God became a matter of ideas and words and activism. Prayer became something the believer did on behalf of others or as a rational and verbal expression of devotion.
Gone was the mystery and awe, the intimacy and simplicity of the prayer of the heart—a wordless, contemplative, loving encounter with the Beloved—which had characterized Christianity for most of its history.
Astonishingly, the same Reformation whose ideas fostered democratic reforms throughout Europe, making the political process accessible to all people, more often than not had the opposite effect spiritually: the ordinary believer often felt she didn’t know enough to pray, or was intimidated to open his mouth because he wasn’t sure he had the right words.
But we are moving today toward a recovery of prayer.
5.29.2012
I agree with you. My cuestion is, what role does the mind play in loving God? It is clear that the heart is the most important player when it comes to loving. But, what does it mean to love God with all your mind, heart, strength etc.? Or is this cuestion not necesary because we use the brain too much anyway?
5.29.2012
Hello Mathias! Good to hear from you. I’m trying to recall…are you in South American now?
The mind is critical and not to be dismissed. The problem is, most of our minds are out of control…that is, they are given too much primacy. The mind must learn to sit at the feet of Jesus, that is, to rest in the heart, which is the cradle of Christ.
Jesus’ saying, “heart and soul, mind and strength” is is way of saying “the whole of your being.” We are to love with our full humanness. Alas, for too many of us, our faith is a head-trip, disembodied really. Christ’s appeal is for a fully integrated faith.
Work toward that integration and the questions is no longer necessary. But to get moving, we in the West (or in parts of the world so deeply influenced by the West) must learn that there are places the mind simply can’t take us. Our minds won’t like hearing that–they’re rather egotistical:)
So, my appeal is for us to give the mind a vacation occasionally, so other functions can grow and we can become more fully human.
is not primary. It must learn to serve the heart, which