Prayer Should Have a Warning Label

Plus: Is Jordan Peterson a Christian–yet?

And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ^When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” ^And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. --Mark 1:37-39

Prayer, when practiced with utmost attention, does strange things to people. That’s what happens when you talk to the Alpha and Omega.

Such an encounter prompts an aged Middle-Eastern nomad named Abram to abandon his homeland. It gives a diminutive shepherd named David the wisdom and courage to lead a nation. It so humbles an angry cult-watcher named Saul that he turns his life around. It prompts a spoiled young man from Assisi to abandon the glories of a military and commercial life to live as literally as possible by the Sermon the Mount. It inspires a young Albanian to spend her life feeding those dying on the streets of Calcutta.

This divine encounter is devastating, and like a hit of spiritual heroin, the person becomes addicted to things divine, desperate for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Thus, in the Psalms, where the passions of the godly are most vividly expressed, we find a kind of God-obsession: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you,” (Ps. 73:25) and “My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times….. With open mouth I pant… for your commandments” (Ps. 119:20, 131).

Metaphors of thirsting and starving abound: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1-2).

So fixated are the God-driven that they cannot snap out of it, even when they want to: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more of his name,’ wrote Jeremiah, “then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer. 20:9).

When Francis of Assisi was attending worship one day, the gospel lesson was from Matthew: “Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff” (10:9-10, NIV). 

Francis was startled at the reading and suddenly filled with inexplicable joy: “This is what I want!” he shouted. “This is what I long for with all my heart!”

“He immediately took off his shoes from his feet,” Saint Bonaventure, his biographer, notes, “put aside his staff, cast away his wallet and money as if accursed, was content with one tunic and exchanged his leather belt for a piece of rope. He directed his heart’s desire to carry out what he had heard and to conform in every way to the rule of right living given to the apostles.”

The command of God was, for Francis, his joy. So it is with all the godly: there is no difference between God’s commands and his rewards. God is alpha and omega, all in all, and they cannot get enough of him. They are God-addicted, like Julian of Norwich: “I saw him and sought him! I had him and I wanted him.”

When the saint’s heart, soul, mind, and strength are completely consumed with God, the world loses many of its hues. Things moral and spiritual are seen with startling clarity and usually in black and white. You are either for God or against him, for joy or for despair, for goodness or for evil. You are willing to leave everything and anyone to follow him. You live a life that is marked by unceasing prayer.

Mark reminds us in his first chapter that Jesus, too, was a man of prayer: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (1:35). This characteristic of our Lord is noted in all the Gospels, especially Luke. Luke records not only this incident, but he also tells his readers that Jesus prayed at his baptism (3:21) and spent the night in prayer before selecting the Twelve (6:12-16). When Luke notes that Jesus “would withdraw to deserted places and pray” (Luke 5:16), he’s indicating that this was a regular practice of our Lord.

It should not surprise us then that Jesus, even more a man of prayer than the saints, will act oddly sometimes. 

What Jesus does in this early scene in Mark is odd indeed. Suffering people are coming to him, people who are ill, lonely, lost, crippled, anxious; some are no doubt dying. These sufferers—locals, thus many of whom he knows--are literally begging for his healing touch and life-giving words. So Simon and company search out Jesus to alert him.

Jesus just tells them he’s got other plans now: he must go to neighboring towns, “so that I may proclaim the message there also.”

In a culture in which family and community had the right to one’s allegiance, this must have been something of a shock. This backwater area of the Roman Empire finally has a wonder-worker in their midst, and he’s not even going to help the hometown folks? 

Since we know the end of the Gospel story, we can safely assume that Jesus is anything but an ingrate. We can also assume he deeply loves his family, friends, and the people who are clamoring for his help—many of whom he has known growing up in the region. He surely looked upon these people with more warmth than he did upon a city of strangers many miles away, when he later said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. … How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Mt. 23:37).  

We can surmise, then, that it was not an easy thing for him to say to his disciples, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns.” I dare say it may have torn him apart inside. Greater love has no man than that he should give his life for his friends, Jesus once said. True enough. But it appears also to be true that sometimes greater love has no God-lover than that we should politely ignore the demands of friends and family because we’ve been called to do something else.

 Jordan Peterson: The Almost Christian

Faithful readers of PV know that I have a soft spot in my heart for Jordan Peterson. Among other reasons: He takes Judeo-Christian faith with utmost seriousness, and his understanding of the Bible (especially the opening chapters of Genesis) is  bursting with psychological insights.  At times, he sounds like he is a believer, but when pressed he hems and haws. Like when years ago he was asked if he believed in God and he replied, “Well, what do we mean by ‘God,’ and what do we mean by ‘believe’?” 

Theologically, those are actually good questions to ponder.  But come on, Jordan….

 This piece does a good job of showing that side of Jordan, but the author seems a little too impatient for him to commit. The spiritual journey for some is long and twisted.  Patience….

Grace and peace,

Mark

Notes:  

1.     The Francis story is from The Major Legend of Saint Francis, chapter 3, in Francis of Assisi:  Early Documents, Vol 2: The Founder, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Hellmann, and William J. Short (New City Press, 2000) page 542. 

2.     Today’s offering is an adaptation from my book Jesus Mean and Wild, which is almost 20 years old now.  I started writing about this week’s gospel passage and remembered I’d done so earlier!  Not quite the style I use today, but close—and a good reminder of how one’s writing matures with time.

3.     Photo credit: fcscafeine