It's About Freedom

Let me start with this disclaimer - that I think each person should figure out what they believe and what that looks like.  And I understand that that may be different based on the culture or background of each person.  That said, here’s a quick story related to the topic.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammed took a trip to heaven.  Once there, he asks Allah how often he should tell the people to pray.  And Allah responds that the people should pray 50 times per day.  Muhammed takes this answer and is about to leave heaven when he runs into Moses.  He tells Moses about the 50 times per day, and Moses goes, ‘Whoa, hold on there.  I know these people – they are not going to go for this.  You should go back and see if you can get a better deal.’  So Muhammed goes back and Allah lets him have 40 times per day.  But once again Moses thinks this is way too much, so Muhammed goes back again.  This happens over and over.  Allah goes down to 30, then 20, then 10, and finally only 5 times per day.  Moses still doesn’t think the hardheaded people will go for it, but Muhammed disagrees.  So he goes back to earth and tells the people they should pray 5 times per day.  Which is why Muslims do that.

OK, here we go.  I’m involved in a couple of things right now.  One is at the church I work for.  We’re doing this thing called the 60/60 Experiment.  The idea is that you set an alarm to chime on the hour throughout the day.  And each time you stop and pray for a minute.  And the whole thing goes on for 60 days.  Right off, I was trying to be open-minded, but with my own healthy skepticism.  I can see where it would be good for people to pray more consistently, and I like the idea of our whole church joining together in a sustained amount of prayer.  But I personally tend to rebel against any ongoing thing that I feel like I’m ‘supposed’ to do.  And I don’t care for the one-size-fits-all mentality that so many Christian authors have, which seems like the case here.  But, like I said, trying to be open-minded, and what can it hurt, right?

At the same time, my men’s group is reading a book about different world religions and right now we’re reading about Islam.  One of the things Muslims do is pray 5 times per day.  And not just a quickie shout-out to God.  They face Mecca, get on their knees and fervently pray as they lean further and further forward, until finally their foreheads touch the ground.

This, to me, is creepy.  I mean no disrespect, but the thought of millions of Muslims praying at the same time 5 times per day, every single day, just feels … offputting?   

I spent some time thinking through these two things.  On the one hand you have Muslims devoutly praying multiple times per day.  On the other you have my church asking us to pray every hour of the day.  And both of them are rubbing me the wrong way.  Why?

One of the differences between Christianity and Islam is that Jesus doesn’t go into a lot of specifics about how we should live.  Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  And a good number of other guidelines, but really Jesus spends a lot of time trying to get rid of laws.  Paul says all things are permissible but not all things are profitable.  Islam, on the other hand, has a ton of rules for every aspect of life.  Including when and how to pray.

It seems like I should be in favor of more prayer.  Not just for Christians, but even for Muslims.  Don’t I want people to try to draw closer to God in whatever way they think is best?

Only …

Only … well, to put it simply – we’re not robots.  God didn’t create us to blindly follow.  I don’t think that’s what He wants at all. 

It’s about freedom.

Now, I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, then you’ve read every other word of my blog up until now and remember it all.  Right?  So you know that I believe I’m wired a bit differently than some other folks when it comes to hearing from God.  While many people ‘hear’ from God in a variety of ways, from a direct voice to an inner prompting or what have you, I don’t tend to get those directions.  And while I remain open to hearing from God in a more direct way, I believe that in my case, He knows what He’s doing and He just wants to see what I’ll do with as little direct involvement as possible.  He wants to see me make decisions, for good or bad, knowing that I will eventually choose Him in all things.

For good or bad.  I think that’s important.  Because I make a ton of bad choices.  Too many to list here.  But I suspect that in some strange way, even those bad choices are somehow … sacred.  Because they’re part of working out my faith.  They’re part of the process of sanctifying me.  They’re part of the journey God wants me to be on.  Does He enjoy seeing me hurt myself?  No, of course not.  But He enjoys watching me find my way, even with the missteps.

So, back to this whole 60/60 prayer thing.  I’ll go along with it, in my own half-assed way.  But I don’t care for it.  Different strokes for different folks and all that.  God values our uniqueness and wants us each to come to Him in our own way and in our own time.