Why People Bother To Pray

A student once told me, when she prays at night, she wonders if the only one listening is the ceiling.  I get it.  Many people in the world pray, each in their own way.  But what is the point of praying if we are not sure anyone is listening?  And if there is a God listening, why are the answers to prayer so ambiguous, unclear, and inconsistent? As a child of Holocaust survivors whose relatives were murdered in the Nazi Camps, I am puzzled by prayer and what it accomplishes.

Maybe the purpose of prayer is to inform God of how we are feeling or what we want.  But, I assume any God worth his or her salt would already know what we think, feel, want and need.  So, why pray?

The logical response is catharsis and fear.  Prayer allows us to get our concerns and feelings out of our minds and say them to God or the universe?  Or, maybe it’s a matter of habit.  It’s what we do every morning and evening.  So, we don’t even think about it.  We go through the motions.  Or, perhaps we are going through some mental or physical struggle and we feel alone.  Yes, catharsis has its place in prayer.

Maybe, the reason people pray has to do with truth.  It is that place where we speak the truth about our hopes, our yearnings, our dreams, our gratitude, our confessions, our anger, our questions, our struggle, our tears and sighs to deep for words.  There is a human need to express our deepest feelings and to feel someone is listening.  Truth has its place.

I am a person who prays. I pray because it connects me to the Jewish community.  Across the world, Jews say the Shema (Hear Israel, the Lord is God, The Lord is one) two times a day.  When I pray in Hebrew I feel connected to that praying throng and tribe.  I am Jewish, and that fact gives meaning to my life.

The real reason many people pray is because things in the world are not what they ought to be.  Praying to God is letting the deity know, we see what our world is all about and it is not what it should be.  Prayer is a way of coping with what comes along.  Behind every prayer is the tenacious belief that things can be different.  Things, situations, people can change.  So, we pray and importune God, despite the silence of God.

I am not sure what God has to do with all our praying.  The romantic and religious part of me likes to think God is involved in our world interacting with all our prayers in some inscrutable, ineffable, mysterious way. That’s comforting.

When all is said and done, I think we pray because we feel out of control, it keeps us sane and because many of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, hope against hope someone is listening besides the ceiling.