The con of prayer

My entire life, I very rarely, if ever, felt my prayers were answered, and I am traumatized by years of thinking it was because my faith wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t a good enough Christian. I was always told when it came to prayer that “sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. And sometimes the answer is not yet.” 

Oh, okay. My only real question was, “Why are my answers always ‘no’ or (when there was no apparent answer) ‘not yet’?” Otherwise, I accepted this nonsense. 

If prayer does anything at all, it is for the one saying the prayer, not the recipient. Indeed, the person praying feels as if they have contributed, that they have done something when in reality, the most they have done is devote a minuscule amount of their time to you. Whenever someone says they’ll pray for me, I smile and say, “Thank you.” I don’t press it because I understand they genuinely believe they are accomplishing something, and I appreciate the sentiment. It just boggles my mind that they never seem to keep score of prayers answered, and if they do, they count their hits and ignore their misses. It doesn’t work that way. Why pray at all? Doesn’t god already know what you want? It seems it would be an annoyance to god To incessantly be bugged about things he’s already fully aware of. 

There has been a study on the effects of prayer on cardiac bypass patients across three groups that showed a higher number of complications among those that were prayed for. I will link to the study at the end of this post.

Many religions run on the “blame the victim” mentality where the ineffectiveness of prayer or any hardship in life is because “they didn’t believe enough” or “their faith wasn’t strong enough.” I told myself this for years, especially since my mother seemed to have a direct line to god. I felt so guilty for so long. I thought if I just read my bible more, were even more involved in church, and poured my all into it, I’d get that “Holy Spirit.” That’s what they want you to think. That’s how they get you. Blaming the victim is grossly inappropriate behavior–and if there were a God, He would surely put a stop to it. 

He doesn’t.

Some Useful links

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer
Freedom from Religion
Recovering from Religion

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