Spending Time Praying is Pointless

When I was religious, I spent a lot of time praying. It gave me great comfort. Whenever I received news of a global tragedy, whenever someone close to me suffered hurt I could not mitigate, or whenever unavoidable suffering struck me personally, I would fervently pray. Prayer was my way of taking action when I felt there was no action I could take.

I’m not a believer anymore, so I’ve stopped praying. Now, in the moments where I would pray, I only feel empty grief.

It’s only in the absence of my prayers that I understand the role they played in my life — and how that role was ultimately hollow.

Prayer is For Yourself, Not Others

My prayers for Haiti, Uganda, and other troubled people in faraway lands did not change the course of their lives one bit. They may have made me felt like I was doing “all that I could” to help them, but they didn’t actually change anything one whit.

You know what would have changed something? Donating to the right charity. Raising awareness. Even making a social media post would have been more helpful to them than my prayers, which were nothing more than me feeling really sad for a few minutes and then moving on with my life.

My prayers weren’t really for them, though. They were for me. They helped me feel like I was doing something to change the broken world I live in when I was doing nothing.

The intellectually honest thing to do is admit there are tragedies in the world I could do something about, but I’m not. I could donate, protest, or raise awareness, but I wasn’t.

I think that’s reasonable. There are a bazillion different causes that deserve my money and I’m just one poor androgyne. But praying allowed me to feel good about myself for “doing something” when I wasn’t, and that was a lie.

Prayer Prevented Me From Taking Action

When it comes to international tragedies, it’s reasonable for me to decide there’s nothing I can do. But prayer’s role in my life with respect to my personal struggles was much more insidious.

For the last year, my romantic relationship has been suffering. I prayed often for guidance. With these prayers, I sought transcendent wisdom; I prayed for intuitive guidance that would reveal to me the “right behavior” that would put me on the “right path,” whatever that may be.

Waiting for intuitive guidance kept me from taking effective action. Instead of practicing skills I learned in therapy or following the guidance of my therapists and doctors in the face of conflict, I feverishly prayed, hoping this time would be the time the intuitive unconscious wisdom of the universe would guide me.

I don’t pray anymore. I recognize the universe is indifferent. It is indifferent to the quality or length of my romantic relationship, the financial condition of the US, and the Syrian civil war. Nothing is intervening on our behalf.

Now that I’m not a believer, I don’t pray in the face of challenges. I say to myself “I am the only thing I can depend on. There is no God to save me. What can I do to make the situation better?” This method of problem-solving is a lot more effective than prayer.

A Good God Wouldn’t Wait for Prayer

The whole notion of prayer seems kind of ridiculous anyway. If God loves each and every one of us, what difference would prayer make?

My family is made up of my parents, me, and my two brothers. My parents don’t wait to take care of my siblings until I ask them to. They take care of all of us, regardless of whether we take notice. To pray is essentially to ask God to take care of children he should already be tending to in the first place.

And if God is already tending to everyone, prayer is pointless. God will do what he will do, and your prayers are as useless as they would be if God didn’t exist.

Either…

1. Prayer makes a difference: God only tends to people when we ask them to. (Which raises the question, why is our request so special?)
2. Prayer does not make a difference: God will do what he will do when he wants to do it, and our praying is pointless regardless of whether God exists or not.

Meditative Prayer May Be Different

When people discuss meditation, they are quick to point out there are some forms of Abrahamic and western prayer that closely resemble the act of meditation. Studies have routinely found profound benefits for meditation across many different areas of physical and mental health, so people often use this notion of “meditative prayer” to defend the material benefits of prayer.

If what you call “praying” is meditating, then it may carry material benefit. But when most lay Christians pray, they are definitely not meditating. They are saying “Let us pray together,” stringing together a loosely related series of requests and statements of gratitude, and then moving on.

Gratitude practices have been shown to have health benefits, and so does meditation, but the act of “praying” — God, please save the people of South Africa, please save my friend Julie’s mom from breast cancer — is neither of these things. We would be better off donating money and visiting Julie’s mom with her.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine a life without prayer. Prayer was the backbone of my emotional health, the place to which I turned when confronted with things I could not change.

It was only after suddenly losing my belief that I realized this sturdy emotional support was actually only a comfortable lie I told myself to shield myself from the reality that I don’t want to do what it takes to change.

Next time, before you pray, first ask yourself “Is there anything I could do to change the situation?” If God does exist, he is surely more pleased with one who acts than he is with one who rests on his laurels and spends all his time praying.

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