People in our lives often tell us they are “praying for” us, that they are “keeping us in their prayers,” etc. Sometimes these assurances on the part of others bring us comfort, but other times they stir up complex emotions such as anger, or sadness, or confusion. What is going on when people offer to pray for us? And why do these offers stir up such a wide range of emotions and provoke such strong responses? Dan explores these questions in this week’s episode.
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Hello and welcome to It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and as always, glad to be with everybody listening.
Want to thank those of you who support us in all the different ways that you do, whether it's through the emails, whether it is financially, whether it is just listening to the ads, which I know suck, but they help make it possible for us to do what we do.
And as always, I want to hear from you.
You can reach me at danielmillerswaj.com.
I always respond to as many emails as I could.
I spent a lot of time over the weekend and early this week trying to respond to some emails, dig out a little bit from under the pile that I'm under.
But it's a pile that builds up faster than I can dig, so I think all of you who respond, all of you who share the great ideas, the insights, additional information I didn't have, all the things that you share, I want to keep hearing from you.
You're what really drives this series, so thank you so much.
Having said all of that, let's dive into the topic for today.
And this is one that I've heard about, again, from a lot of people from really a lot of different perspectives.
And as it happens, several people just kind of in the last week or so about this topic.
And it stirs up emotions and passions that kind of go in all different kinds of directions.
And unlike most of the topics that we tackle in this series, this is one that cuts across Christian traditions and also I think will directly impact some people who are not maybe in the Christian tradition but are in traditions that are similar sort of structurally speaking, let's say.
And the theme or the topic that I want to look at is what it means when somebody says they're praying for us or that we are in their prayers or that they will say a prayer for us or that they will keep us in their prayers or any number of sort of permutations of this.
And as I say, I've heard from people all over the place With regard to the effect that hearing these statements has on them, I've heard people who are really hurt by this, and when they're told this, when they hear somebody say they're praying for them, they get really angry, or maybe it makes them sad.
I've heard from people who, in all sincerity and good faith, offer prayers to others and are surprised at the kind of angry or hurt response that they get from other people about this.
They've reached out and said, like, what is going on?
I'm not trying to be mean or make somebody upset or whatever.
So I wanted to sort of dig into this, and it really is sort of an interesting or kind of complicated topic.
And I want to start with the basics here.
So if you didn't grow up in a tradition in which prayer figures prominently, or if you've always been, you know, pretty convinced you don't think that there is a God who intervenes in the world or some such thing, Then the whole idea of prayer, you know, of communicating with the divine might be kind of weird or off-putting.
But for folks who believe not only that there is a God, but that that God cares about what happens to our world and the people in it, prayer can be central.
And again, this doesn't have to be limited to the Christian tradition.
There are other traditions where notions of a sort of active, responsive intervention on the part of God or some other divine or supernatural being is a real thing, where communicating with that being can be a real thing, where prayer can, you know, can play a role here.
And so for people within those traditions, prayer can be really central.
It's a means of asking God to intervene, of letting God know of our concerns and our fears and so on.
For many, many Christians, and again for some of those in other traditions as well, prayer is nothing less than the means of changing the world.
And whether you find yourself In that camp or not, whether that resonates with you individually or not, understanding that that is what prayer is for lots of people is sort of a first step in kind of untangling or understanding what it means when somebody says that they'll say a prayer for you or that you're in their thoughts or their prayers or whatever, right?
Now, attentive listeners, I can see it now.
I can see the emails that I get, and I love these emails where people bring up all the things that I don't get to talk about in a podcast.
Things that are like, did you think of this and this and this and this?
And oftentimes they're things I didn't think of, but oftentimes they're things that I did that just kind of go beyond the scope of what we can do here.
But attentive listeners are immediately going to ask questions about, you know, if God is omniscient and knows everything, why do you need to tell God things in prayers?
If God foreknows everything that will happen, then in principle nothing can happen that God didn't already intend to happen, so does prayer become superfluous?
People will get into the, you know, philosophical debates about whether or not a God that is what What we call classical theism says that God is and so God doesn't exist in time and so forth.
So how does it make any sense to pray to God if we're finite temporal beings and have God act in the world and so forth?
All of those are real questions.
They're big questions.
I have no compelling way to rectify those theological views.
It's why I don't hold those theological views.
All of which is just to say that there's a long history, histories really, of theologians wrestling with those things.
But the important thing to know, like with this podcast, right, when we're looking at how this religious language and the things that people say and do, the work that it actually does, like sort of in the social world, what I can tell you, and I can tell you this from talking to people, I can tell you this from my years in ministry, I can tell you this as, you know, from years of being a Christian who prayed and asked God things and so forth, These questions simply don't keep most people who pray up at night.
Some of them are aware that those issues are there.
A lot of them aren't.
Either way, they operate from a deep-seated conviction that God hears prayers and responds to them.
So that's our starting point.
People that are really interested in those other theological debates and so forth, more power to you.
This isn't the space where we're going to, like, settle those issues, okay?
So within that framework, that framework of somebody who really truly believes and is convinced that God loves us and cares about us and intervenes in the world and that prayer is a way of imploring God to do that and so forth, right?
Within that framework, For sincere, well-meaning believers, there can be no greater expression of concern or intervention for somebody than to, quote, keep them in your prayers, right?
Within their world of experience, this offers nothing less than divine comfort and intervention into whatever situations in their lives it is that these people are dealing with.
So very often, from the perspective of those who do the praying, the offer to pray for us, the assurance that they are keeping us in their prayers and so forth, it's a sincere, heartfelt expression of compassion and concern and care.
And that, the fact that it's that expression of concern and care, this is why angry or dismissive responses From those of us who might be uneasy about those statements come as such a shock.
It's why when, you know, they tell somebody that they'll keep them in their prayers and the person responds with cynicism or hostility or bursts into tears or whatever, it can be baffling to them, right?
Because it really is a well-intentioned offer from their perspective.
So the question that I'm interested in is what's going on there?
Like why does that happen?
If so many of those offering prayers are sincere and caring, why does that offer of prayer affect many of us in the negative ways that it does?
Or why does it, at the very least, sort of fall on deaf ears?
It simply doesn't resonate with us the way that those who say it might think that it would, right?
I think there are a lot of dynamics at work here, right?
And I think that to understand that, we have to get past the sort of surface meaning of those affirmations, and we certainly have to get past What the offer to pray for us means on the part of, again, those sincere, kind, well-meaning people who make that offer or who say that.
And again, those people cut across Christian traditions.
This is not one of the topics that is limited to conservative Christians or to high-control and high-demand religious contexts and so forth.
This goes much broader than that.
So we've got to dig below that and try to see what's going on.
And the first thing we find, if we dig in just a little bit, it's the most obvious, okay?
And it's this.
Not everyone who offers to pray for us is expressing the kind of care and concern we've been describing.
That is, not everybody who says they're going to keep us in their prayers or offers to pray for us or says they'll be praying for us Not all of them are acting in good faith, right?
What do I mean by that?
Well, very often, like so many of the codes we explore in this series, the language or the offer or the affirmation that I will keep you in my prayers or I'll say a prayer for you, it's the coded language of judgment and coercion.
Often the offer of prayer, it's a passive-aggressive judgment on something in our lives.
Parents say they will pray for us because they don't approve of who we're dating or maybe the gender of the person we're dating or whatever.
A friend or a co-worker might say that they will keep us in their prayers because they don't like our political ideology.
Maybe siblings will say they'll pray for us because they don't approve of the way we live our lives.
And this I know many of you are familiar with.
Again, my clients with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, I hear this from them.
I've received emails.
I've had so many conversations with people about this.
That's, I know, something that's at work.
And sometimes, people I talk to, I think, don't even sort of know how to articulate this.
They just feel discomfort when somebody says, I'll pray for you.
And oftentimes, this is the mechanism that I think is at work.
And the reason is, if we translate those offers for prayer, they communicate something like this.
They basically say, hey, you know what?
God disapproves of something in your life.
God disapproves of your sexual orientation.
Or God disapproves of your gender identity, or God disapproves of how you voted in the last election, or God doesn't like the way you're raising your kids, or God thinks that you're too supportive of Black Lives Matter, or whatever.
God doesn't like something in your life, but you're unwilling to change, so I'm going to have to hope that God is able to make you see the sinfulness of your ways because I can't.
That's what's communicated.
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And given how central to our lives, many of these things that people disapprove of can be, how central to our lives, things like our sexuality or our sense of gender or the moral and political and social views that we hold, how centrally defining these are for us.
When somebody says, Oh, I'll pray for you.
When they communicate that judgment on us, they're communicating a deep part of us.
They're communicating what is most important about us.
And they're judging that.
And that coded language comes through loud and clear, which is why it provokes the response that it does, which is why it makes us angry.
And I think it's exacerbated by the fact that by phrasing it this way of, I will pray for you or I'll keep you in my prayers, it can also be completely deniable on the part of the person who says it.
It's like so many passive-aggressive comments.
When somebody makes those comments and they say, what?
I was just joking, or I don't know what you're talking about.
I was simply stating a fact, or you know, whatever.
It is when you know that there's more to it.
You know that there's judgment.
You know that there's coercion.
You know that there's evaluation of you there.
They can deny it.
They can always claim that they are being sincere, that they quote, just worry about us or that they just care about us or whatever, right?
So that's the first thing if we dig in.
And again, I think it's the most obvious is that oftentimes those claims or statements that I'll be praying for you, I'll keep you in my prayers and so forth, they're not made sincerely or out of a place of care or concern.
The second thing I think we find if we dig in, it's connected to this first one, but I think it's a little less obvious, and it is that oftentimes offers to pray for us or to keep us in their prayers, they're often a license to do nothing concrete to help us.
They basically operate as an excuse not to do anything more tangible or concrete or anything that would take more work.
The most egregious of these is the one that, to me, is the most infuriating.
I've talked about it before a lot on Straight White American Jesus.
I know it'll be familiar to many of you, but it's the one that, for me, most clearly illustrates this point.
And this is the way that, like, after every high-profile mass shooting in the United States in particular, we are assured by political and religious conservatives and other gun activists that, quote, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and victims.
And why does that make me angry?
It makes me angry because almost universally, this language is offered by those who actively oppose the passage of gun control measures, who are resistant to the idea that there's a culture of gun violence in the U.S.
that needs to be addressed, and things like that.
So in short, when they offer their quote-unquote thoughts and prayers, that basically is a legitimation for not doing anything else.
Thoughts and prayers within this context have become nothing more than a kind of tagline for the American gun lobby.
And it's that dynamic, right?
That's the obvious example, but it's that dynamic that I think is also at work and is often felt by those of us who are told by somebody, oh, I'll be praying for you.
I think it's the most explicit and extreme example of a broader pattern.
So very often, I think, offers to pray for those of us who are legitimately going through a rough time.
Maybe it's economic trouble.
Maybe you lose a job.
Maybe it's the death of a loved one.
Maybe somebody's going through a divorce or having relational problems.
Maybe somebody is struggling with how to tell people about their sexual identity or their gender identity or something like that.
Oftentimes, the offers to pray for them are given instead of concrete action or help.
Even the very well-intentioned view that only God can help people in these kind of leads to a failure to act.
So even those well-intentioned Christians who say, I'll be praying for you, because they believe that only God can really intervene in the situation, the fact that they believe that only God can intervene means that often they themselves don't do anything.
The reality is that oftentimes real everyday help is trivialized.
And I think sometimes, to be fair to those who say, I'll be praying for you, they don't know what else to say.
They may feel powerless.
They may feel that they can't help.
And so they say that when maybe they would be better off just saying, this is really terrible.
I don't know what I could do to help you.
But, I'll be here with you, I'll be here for you, right?
Versus sort of passing it off to God.
Whether intentional or not, whether well-intentioned or not, offers and assurances of prayer are often experienced as a lack of care or concern.
And again, that can be really confusing and hard for the people who are sincere in their religious practices.
It can be really difficult if they are doing other things as well.
They are acting out of care, but for those who hear it, oftentimes it communicates precisely the opposite.
So what does all this mean, all these different things?
The long and short of it is that someone's assurance that they're praying for us, it can be really complicated.
For many people, many of us who hear that, it is comforting.
It does offer comfort.
Even if we're not in the same sort of religious space or frame of mind as the people who offer it, sometimes we can appreciate The value of those for whom that does matter and know that it's an expression of care and receive it as such.
But sometimes it's not offered sincerely.
Sometimes it is a license for doing nothing else.
And oftentimes, if we've experienced that, if we have had somebody in our life, maybe for years, maybe for decades, Judge us and hide behind quote-unquote praying for you as a way of sort of masking that.
If we have for years and years and years heard a certain kind of religious figure say, oh, those people and their families and the victims and so forth, they're in our thoughts and prayers, but don't ask us to do anything about it.
If we have heard people talk about the poor or the marginalized or people in some war-torn part of the world, and we have sat through sermons or heard pastors or people in our life say, oh, I pray for those people every day, but they won't take out their checkbook and write to a relief agency, or they won't do anything concrete to help,
That shapes what it means for us when we hear somebody say, I'll be praying for you, which means that even if you are the well-intentioned person, and you come and you say, hey, you know what?
I'm praying for you.
Those experiences can do everything to sort of color the way that that That offer of prayer hits and lands on us, and this is why it's so complicated, because on the part of both the person receiving the statement, I'm praying for you, on the person making the statement, there can be so many different dynamics at work, right?
So we need to wind this up.
One thing I would say is this, kind of a final thing, You're listening to this, and you are a person for whom prayer is real.
It does communicate care and concern for you.
You truly believe that God will and can intervene in people's lives.
What I would say is this, if you really believe that, you can pray for somebody.
You don't have to tell them.
You don't have to try to win them over or convince them that you're not one of the quote-unquote bad guys or that you're not being manipulative.
If prayer is real for you, Then pray, and nobody's going to know, nobody's going to get upset, nobody's going to yell at you.
If you are a person who wants to pray for others and you feel like you have to tell them and that they somehow need to acknowledge from you that this is valuable and meaningful, what I would suggest is that this is something that maybe you need to look at, that maybe it says more about your need to pray than it does about the other person, just to throw that out there.
Gotta wind this up.
I want to thank everybody again who reached out about this.
Again, several people just in the last week.
Other people have brought this up before, but it was a topic that seemed sort of timely because I heard from so many people for whatever reason within the last week talking about this.
But these are some of the dynamics I think are at play.
This is why it's so complicated for many to hear that somebody's praying for them.
It's why it's so complicated for many people to say to somebody that they are praying for them.
As always, I would love to hear from you, whether it's on this, whether it's other ideas and topics.
You can reach me at danielmillerswaj.
Again, I can't do this series without you.
I want this to be driven by you, so please keep the ideas coming.
I apologize, as always, that I just can't respond to as many emails as I receive, but I do the best that I can.
Thank you all, thank you for the support, and as always, until we're together again in this strange virtual format, please be well.
