The other day as I was scrolling through my newsfeed, I again saw people asking for prayers, thoughts, or good vibes. The specific quotes were, “I need prayers, good vibes, thoughts- whatever you believe in!” and “Send good vibes, pray, charge your crystals, ask the universe for help on my behalf.” When contemplating these examples of this request that I have seen countless times, it struck me that I rarely ever see anyone asking for prayers any more unless they offer “good vibes” or “good juju” as an acceptable alternative. From a Christian standpoint, this is troubling, and I would like to make a request of fellow believers: Christians, stop asking your friends for good energy and putting it on par with prayer. If you do not follow the God of the Bible, then please ask anyone for anything you desire. I have no right to make this request of those who do not follow my beliefs, but I feel it incumbent upon me to say it to those who do.
The temptation is to brush such a little grievance off and relegate it to the dustbin of semantics, but I think this small issue is indicative of a bigger problem in the current Christian mindset. We live in a culture in which truth claims are not popular. To claim any personal truth is to negate or question the truth of someone else. In religion, this is par for the course. Not all truths can be equal because they contradict each other. Jesus cannot be God in one religion, a prophet in another, or a good teacher in a third and all three world views be correct. Some or all of them must be wrong. Likewise, Christian prayer to the Abrahamic God is not compatible with crystal energy or a human-based system of enlightenment. If we believe the first, the latter are inconsistent based on our directives in scripture.
Sometimes when pressed, a Christian will admit to a more scriptural understanding of prayer and petition, but in an increasingly watered-down American Christian culture, we no longer even want to say what WE actually believe out loud- at least not exclusively. We want to ask for prayers, but we don’t want to seem fanatical or exclusionary. Maybe if we don’t ask for ONLY prayers we can slide it in under the radar? We are afraid that a hard-and-fast idea about religion might make it appear that we are not giving space for what someone else believes. At some point, though, we are going to have to decide if we really believe anything at all. Do we believe in the Christian concept of a God who hears and answers prayer or do we believe that the New Age philosophy of energy traveling across the universe from one person’s mind to another (in essence inter-personal prayer) is just as effective? We should know what we believe, and we should not be afraid to say that and only that.
Not only is this fear of offending preventing us from clearly asking for the specific prayers we presumably actually want, but it serves no real purpose for inclusivity anyway. I know people who follow New Age philosophy, and those people are generally not going to ask me for prayers- specifically not for prayers to the God I worship. Likewise, I am not going to ask them for vibes or energy, and I promise you that they would not expect me to do so. Who knows? They might send me a good vibe anyway (and it wouldn’t offend me), but it would not be something I was seeking or that I believed to be helpful. In the same way, I often pray for my friends who are non-believers whether they ask for it or not. I usually do not even tell them I have done so, but because I actually believe prayer works, I keep them in my prayers when I see they are going through a hard time. I think about them, but I don’t SEND them thoughts. I don’t meditate on crystals for them or send them energy. Those things are not part of my religion, and my friends don’t expect them to be. Even if they did, I am not answering to my friends, as they are not answering to me.
Christians, when we ask for prayers in the same breath as crystals or vibes or energy, we make it seem that we do not value prayer any more than any of those other things. What are we telling others when we make such a statement? We are not telling them that we are inclusive but rather that we don’t believe our own religion. We are willing to try anything that might work. Maybe it’s a prayer. Maybe it’s juju. Whatever. It doesn’t matter to us as long as positive energy comes our way. Our understanding of prayer, however, is not that we are praying “at” people with positive energy waves but rather “to” a very specific God who has power we do not have. Our Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). Our belief system requires us to believe that God exists, to seek Him, and even to have faith that He rewards those who do so.
It is fitting, then, that we should confidently and purposefully ask for specific prayer directed to the God we worship- not for energy and amorphous thoughts that we do not believe will change the course of events. We can also ask for action and the particulars of what we need. After all, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). If our need can be met by those around us, we can ask for it directly. If you need a casserole, ask for a casserole. If you need a prayer to God for a grievance on your heart, then ask for that. If you are a Christian, however, I beg of you…stop asking for juju.
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Jackie Chea is a blogger from San Antonio, Texas who holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Community Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She writes on political and cultural issues from a conservative, religious standpoint. She lives in the Lone Star State with her husband Nick, her 5-year-old son Lincoln, and her rescue dogs. |
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