She Said She Has To

How Praying For People Is The Thing You Should Do

File: Praying Woman - Nationalmuseum - 23609.tif - Wikimedia Commons

‘Tis the season for me to receive many wonderful gifts, like this question sent to the New York Times Ethicist:

I have an 85-year-old neighbor who is a sweet friend and caring person. My issue is that she is very religious and I’m not at all. She prays for me and says it in person, texts and emails for even the most minor of situations. I’ve told her my view of religion and that she doesn’t need to pray for me. She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible. I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes. — Name Withheld

How do I love this? Let me count all the ways. First of all, what a wonderful neighbor. I wish I could be this sort of person. I do pray for my actual neighbors, but I do it in secret, for I can tell that none of them want to talk to me—except for the one that slaughtered many of the beautiful trees around her house—and would be appalled if they could see into my prayer life. Is this something that happens with age? When I am eighty will I have enough sense to just toddle across the road and shove my way into someone’s life in a way that feels impossible to me now? Gosh I hope so.

Second of all, let’s all join this anonymous saint in praying for her neighbor. God knows everything. Certainly he knows who these two people are, including the New York Times Ethicist, and will hear our cries. I’m adding this unknown person to my prayer list, including the hope that he or she will eventually write back to the Times to tell them that he or she has become a Christian.

Third, I love the glorious simplicity of “She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible.” I read a lot of stuff all the time, but orthodox and apostate, sacred and profane, and the thing I always come around to is that the Bible, in spite of what everyone tries to say, is actually understandable. And the command to pray is the most understandable of all the things that the Bible says. Sure, it’s hard to understand the Trinity and the Dual Natures of Christ and why Samson was such a boob about women and why Joab chose Adonijah over Soloman at the end, but it’s not the least bit hard to grasp that we are to pray.

And why are we to pray? Because God is not only real and has the power to hear our prayers, but because he desires us to speak to him. He wants us to go to him with every little thing that bothers us. He is not the Phil Hartman version of Jesus, wishing that Sally Fields would give it a rest:

However funny this is, it is totally blasphemous. Given that Jesus holds the cosmos together in his baby finger, that he is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the Word made Flesh who dwelt among us in whose face we behold the glory of the Father, if you’re worried about your rice being sticky or the safety of your husband and children, he’s the one to go to. It doesn’t mean you can’t figure out the ratio of water or rice by means of Grok, or take proper precautions about your life, but in your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forever more, he is the person you should go to for help.

Especially for the salvation of your neighbor. What I love so much is the deep wisdom of this praying woman in the face of the foolish young “Name Withheld.” She is the salt of the world, the reason so many of us are staggering along in our lives without giving up. When she prays, God acts. He lifts us up. He puts the world back together.

Anyway, let’s see what the Ethicist has to say in answer to this astonishing question:

I’m glad that you’ve been honest with each other about your very different views concerning prayer. But the stakes for each of you don’t seem comparable. If you don’t think these prayers will do you any good, you presumably also don’t think they’ll do you any harm. By contrast, she thinks that you’ll be worse off without them, and that praying for you is her duty.

The only reason you give for objecting to her prayers is that she has failed to comply with your wishes. Yet I don’t find that she has thereby treated you with disrespect, because I don’t see that you have the right to have those wishes complied with. You seem to be asking her not to do something she thinks there are compelling reasons to do. I’d have thought that this was disrespectful.

So you’re not entitled to insist that she stop including you in her prayers. What you can fairly ask is simply that she refrain from informing you about them. Still, instead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.

What a great day! The New York Times is for real tolerance. It’s like there is a God and he can really hear those who go to him for help and comfort.

Also, we do all need a hefty dose of duty. Duty is the glue that held human society together for so long. When you do things because you ought to, no matter what your feelings are luring you towards, you are casting a light upon the shadows of this world. If you pray for your neighbor only because you know you should, because Jesus commanded you to, you are far better off than if you wait for the desire to emerge out of the bowels of your intransigent affections.

Better yet, pray for your enemies. Go to God for the people for whom you harbor bad feelings. Sit down and squarely ask God to do good things for the person you know hates you, whether deserved or undeserved. The thing you don’t want is to become hard-hearted and resentful about the people you live next to.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have got. so. many. things. to. do. Pray for me like Sally Fields prays for her favorite Soap Opera Stars.