by Carson L. Hicks III
I have been asked to write again. Fortunately, a topic weighs on my mind. This past semester, I took a class on the prevention of child abuse. It was an introductory course, but the professor used a very good text, and followed that up with good questions that prompted me to think. The text was Anna, Age Eight. I recommend it for anyone really, though I especially recommended it for parents. In any case, one of the last topics of discussion was cultural practices that can be mistaken for child abuse, cultural practices that are child abuse, and attempting to suss out the line between the two. Some of the practices presented during this discussion were unsavory but did not rise to the modern definition of abuse. Other practices where abhorrent. One that I found particularly abhorrent was the use of magic.
Let me further explain myself. Magic is a bit of a nebulous term in modernity, so I don’t want to confuse anyone. When I speak of magic, I mean something that a person does that has little to no chance of producing the desired outcome. Buying a lottery ticket in the hopes that you can retire off of the winnings. That’s a great example of magic. The lottery player is doing something, but the thing they are doing has almost no chance of producing the desired result. Playing the lottery instead of investing the money spent on tickets into a retirement account is silly, verifiably so.
One of the most common forms of modern magic, besides the lottery, is prayer. Now, I don’t mean a conversation with God. I mean a demand of God. I mean a demand of God that is followed by no action on the part of the individual making the demand. Look to the earliest mentions of prayer in the Bible. The first that I found was in Genesis 20:7. Herein we find one of the instances of Avraham lying about the nature of his relationship to Sarah. God visits Sarah’s captor in a dream and demands that he return Sarah to Avraham. Therein God states that Avraham will pray for Sarah’s captor so that he is not killed for taking Sarah. This entire sequence is action, on the part of God, Sarah’s captor, and Avraham, coupled with prayer. Look further and you find multiple instance of prayer tied to the restoration of fertility. I firmly believe that such prayers, once answered, were followed up on with action and, only then, conception.
Let me take this idea a step further. I love drilling my faith down to the practical level. It seems pretty useless otherwise, right? What is the practical use of baring all of your worries and desires to God? He already knows about them, so the argument that you’re somehow reminding the omniscient Father of something seems a little silly to me. Of course, God wants to hear from us, but why beg for things from him instead of just telling him about your day? I think it’s rather simple, really. People juggle a lot of stuff in their everyday lives. Work, friends, family, your own needs. To say it’s a lot would be an understatement. It’s overwhelming. You can’t keep up with everything. But you can focus on what’s important to you. And what is important to you? Probably whatever you’re willing to bring before your Father. Prayer is a tool for focusing the mind. Use it to bring what is most important to yourself to the forefront of your mind, then take action knowing that your Father has heard the things that are most important to you.
