PRAYER, ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR SALVATION

Prayer is communication with God. It is union with God and believers say it is two way. God unites with you when you pray and you unite with him. Catholic teaching states that grace is necessary for salvation and prayer is the means of obtaining grace so prayer is necessary for salvation.

 

The Catholic Church following the Bible which says that all who call on the name of the Lord for eternal salvation will be saved teaches that prayer is absolutely necessary for salvation. This doctrine is in the Bible which claims that the prayer of accepting Christ is necessary for salvation (page 1, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection).

 

Anybody that is damned is damned or thrown in Hell forever simply because they did not pray enough or when they needed to (page 30, 31, The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection). Without prayer to get God’s hand over you, you would commit every sin you could (page 56, The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection).

 

The Church opposed the Pelagians for denying that prayer was needed for salvation (page 5, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). It observes that Jesus said that without his grace one can do nothing and not that one cannot complete anything (page 6, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). Logically then the reason Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden was because he did not turn to God in prayer for help in the face of temptation (page 10, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). If that is true then Adam sinned by not praying so he was a sinner before he ate the forbidden fruit yet the whole point of the forbidden fruit was so that Adam would sin if he ate it. So God overlooked the sin of not praying for help in order to pick on Adam for eating a fruit. This is a totally absurd doctrine. Not turning to God is worse than eating of a fruit.

 

The doctrine that prayer is needed for salvation means that praying is more important than doing all possible good works. It is better to give five seconds of your entire life praying than to do all humanitarian works consistently and heroically all your life without praying. This is misanthropic fanaticism carried to the extreme. How people can claim to be humble while claiming that by praying they have done the main good work is amazing. If you have the right to believe something so horrible then how can you object if somebody else believes in acting this horrible? I mean if somebody wants to offer human sacrifices? If faith comes first as you say then you could not blame them for thinking they should do it and are right to actually do it.

 

Forcing a person to pray makes the prayer worthless. But if prayer is necessary for salvation then you are forced to do it for you will rot in Hell forever if you don’t. You might not feel forced but you would if you really believed. You can be forced while not feeling forced. You are asked to live every moment like it was your last. And prayer is necessary to prepare for the last moment. It is the one thing that you cannot omit. That means that if you are going to live as if you are ready to die you are forced to pray as much as you physically and mentally can. Compulsion makes your prayer impotent. The doctrine of eternal punishment prevents you praying. The doctrine then could only come from the Devil if it is true that prayer is the only way to salvation. If you don’t sense you are being forced then you do not really believe in what you think is the word of God and you cannot be saved anyway.

 

Even if we reject eternal punishment there is still the problem that God hates sin infinitely so it is the worst evil. God’s love is immeasurable so his hatred of sin is immeasurable so we should hate sin at all costs and pray to avoid it. Again compulsion steps in.

 

Nobody has the right to accuse you of being capable of being bad enough to turn yourself into a demon who hates all people for all eternity. You need proof to say such things. The prayers then of those who believe that prayer protects people from eternal punishment are bad in the sense for they come from a faith that accuses you. The believer wants to feel he helps you as opposed to really helping you.

 

The Church says salvation means that we will all be in an eternally good and wonderful relationship with each other and God for all eternity. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and is seen as the source of all being. He is not like a person and does not have a body. He cannot change for he is absolutely perfect. Prayer is about a relationship with God. If praying for another person changes me and nothing else what does that mean? That I am using the person's trouble and problems to feel I am improving. Virtue that manipulates others like that is not virtue at all. Perhaps the prayer makes me feel better about helping others better? Maybe that can happen whether there is a God or not. Prayer is not a relationship with God even if he exists for a relationship is about two people changing each other and becoming closer through that changing. There is no such thing as really doing anything for anybody else by praying. Asking for dying John to have a happy death in a few minutes will do nothing for him at all. I am fooling myself.

 

People will deep down be happy to think that they have caused some beneficial or desired things to happen and thinking it will be what matters most to them

 

Prayer is only really possible for those who believe in gods who are very human and have human frailties. This gets around the problem of a god who loves immeasurably and infinitely. Everybody else just only thinks they are praying.

Books Consulted

 

A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, CTS, London, 1985

A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image, New York 1964

AQUINAS, FC Copleston, Penguin Books, London, 1991

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin, London, 1990

BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1960

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, London, 1995

CHARITY, MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1973

CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973

CRISIS OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1995

EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995

ECUMENICAL JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996

THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988

HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995

HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM, London, 1963

HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986

IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996

MADAME GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1986

RADIO REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938

RADIO REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940

RADIO REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1942

REASON AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974

REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982

THE BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978

THE BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF PADUA (Vol 44, No 4)

The Dark Side, How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, Valerie Tarico, Ph.D, Dea Press, Seattle, 2006

THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963

THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979

THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1981

THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990

THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books, New York, 1969

THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner Maine, 1982

THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961

UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982

 

The principle is that if prayer days or prayer times are allowed in schools then in the name of being inclusive and educational and tolerant there has to be anti-prayer days or times as well.

 

 

 

Children are often forced to pray in school. Or they may be pressured to.  

 

The reason praying at school is considered important is because it is divisively and arrogantly presumed that when you push God out, you invite evil in. This is refuted by the huge goodness in non-religious people.

 

Prayer reinforces devotion to a man-made God assuming God has never revealed any religion. Take Catholics. While Catholics do not pray to the pope or the clergy, they do pray to a version of God created by those men. If this version is wrong or not authorised by God, then they as good as worship men. To take man's word for God's word is idolatry.

 

Prayer is an exercise in fanaticism and should be banned from the public schools. No child should be compelled to pray in school.

 

Prayer cannot be any value or have any merit before God unless it is about entering into communion with him.

 

If God is influenced by prayer then God needs to be influenced for he is imperfect and therefore not really a God. If he is not influenced then what he is going to do he is going to do and prayer serves no purpose.

 

The child will begin to fear if he realises prayer tells him that God is not perfect and so malleable.

 

Or the child will use prayer to manipulate God.

 

The encouragement of prayer is not good for the child.

 

If God is all-powerful and all-good then the only prayer that should be said is, “Your will be done”. That is all. Anything else is praying to an idol in your imagination.

 

That is a cruel teaching for the child who is in dire straits. Atheists are accused of giving children no hope but the religious are no better!

 

The Church says that though God knows exactly what we need before we ask him, he asks us to pray. This is not to tell him what we want or to tell him what he should do because he already knows and if he should do something he will do it without prayer. He requests it so that we may be humble and show him that we are so inferior to him and so make a sacrifice of time and our powers to please him alone. This is degrading unless you are very sure God exists. And even then it is demeaning because even if you are sure of the love of your wife you don’t degrade yourself for her and you are surer of her than God!

 

Prayer is as degrading as bowing before an idol and not being sure enough that it is a god. But the Church commands all to pray and even has agnostics doing it. The hypocrisy!

 

Christians often say prayer has helped them. But what about the times prayer seemed to get no response? Witches say the same things about spells and have similar excuses for when spells fail. What is happening is they all look at the successes and ignore the failures and build their faith on that. That is very biased and unfair. It makes them more interested in faith than in truth. They don’t respect others when they promote their faith.

 

The Bible says a doubter cannot get a reply from God (James 1) even though many doubters claim they have! The Church holds that the answers to prayer give evidence that God exists which is why faith dies without prayer - after saying something like that! Prayer makes you closer to God which really means closer to the faith as preached by the Church! It is the Church not God that it makes you close to for the God you get close to is just the Church’s perception of God and not God. The Church encourages prayer for it delights in people obeying it.

 

If doubters can’t get answers sinners have no hope. The prayers of a sinner except for the grace of repentance are mockery. You as a sinner can’t mean to open yourself up to God which is what prayer is about and hold on to sin. The Church says we are all sinners. Prayer then is a very devious and hypocritical act.

 

It is fanaticism to pray for protection for yourself or others. If you pray to God then you are praying to the most powerful thing there is. So it follows that praying for a seriously ill person is far more important than getting the doctor. If you had a choice you would have to do the former. Jesus said to love your neighbour as yourself is like the commandment to love God with all your heart so unless you think of obeying God as more important than the neighbour you are not keeping the command to love the neighbour as yourself. This clearly shows that the God concept implies we should all become fundamentalist fanatics. The result is that we end up one of these in our attitude when this attitude does not spill over into fanatical acts. The message prayer gives is that humanity was made for faith and not faith for humanity which is a clear invitation to the world to be full of poison disguised as sweetness.

 

The studies that find that prayer is good for people can be counteracted by other studies that show that crystals and superstition and spells can be good too and the Church considers them to be satanic and insulting to God! Moreover, prayer is bad and so the good comes about in spite of it and not because of it. If prayer helps it is not down to the supernatural!

 

When a lad prays for a bike and he gets it he thinks it indicates that there is a God. Guilt is behind this. He is afraid to think he might have got it anyway. Prayer is harmful.

 

Confidence in God’s power to undo the damage you do is dangerous for it will lead to a lack of effort on your part to at least some extent. When you won’t act, God has to if he is good for the sake of other people. He cannot let the worst happen while intending to make amends later for that does not justify it. That is all very well but what if there is no God? Religion is usually reluctant to make sure that everybody knows all about its doctrine. It tells people to turn to God in prayer for answers and that is a dangerous approach if there is no God. It is fanatical. Psychics are often bad news but this is no better.

 

Jesus criticised the pagans who prayed tonnes thinking that they would be heard for their many words (Matthew 6:7). So, quality matters and quantity does not. It follows that if one person prays for the world to be holy that prayer will do and is as good as a billion billion similar prayers. Yet Christianity blames the falls of priests and religious into sin on people not praying enough for them. This is an unspeakable blasphemy for it accuses God of neglecting them because other people didn’t ask him to help them. It contradicts the stuff about quality alone being what counts. (All apparitions of the Virgin Mary and the saints and Jesus make the same error. The only way we can tell at times if a miracle claim or vision is a hoax is by examining the message and if the message is silly then the miracle or the vision is not supernatural no matter what other indicators say.) It is blasphemous to order people to pray all the time like the Bible does (1 Thessalonians 5:17) for when one prayer does there is no need for any more. God would not order people to do what they don’t need to do on pain of sin and punishment if he is love.

 

Prayer is impotent when one prayer is not enough so its failure is a proof that there is no God. If religionists thought that one prayer was enough they would not be saying more. They would not be asking for prayers for them.

 

If one prayer is enough and God can’t do more than he does then prayer is blasphemously and unreasonably complaining about this.

 

People forget to pray which a good God would not allow if that is all we are put on earth for. Sinners feel like praying so the inclination to prayer is not evidence for the existence of God. Prayer disproves God though it is supposed to be evidence for him. But only self-righteous and superstitious liars would endorse it.

 

Christians and Jews and Muslims say you should not put God to the test. You should not pray in order to see if what you ask for will happen. For example, you cannot plant two geraniums and ask God to make one grow well and the other grow a bit and then die away to check if there is a God. But surely there has to be circumstances in which this would be legitimate despite the fact that the Bible and these cults forbid it totally. You have a right to know if there is a God and if the evidence for him is good. The reason it is forbidden is that it will soon become apparent that praying makes no difference to geraniums. Testing God when you already have evidence would be wrong and he would be right to ignore you but when it is right and still nothing happens then it should be clear to you that there is no God.

 

Is checking out that God really said something not testing God as well? You have to ask God to show you how to interpret his word so you are testing him. Forbidding the tests means advocating an uncritical acceptance of religion which is dangerous and has caused so much trouble in the past. It is certain that the sin of tempting God, as the clergy call it, is only made a sin to prevent people finding out by experiment that there is no God. We are entitled to tempt God for we have the right to know if he is there and if he cares. Knowledge gives freedom and Jesus said the truth will set you free.

 

The Catholic Church teaches that prayer is absolutely necessary for salvation. This doctrine is in the Bible which claims that the prayer of accepting Christ is necessary for salvation (page 1, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). Anybody that is damned is damned simply because they did not pray enough. The doctrine that prayer is needed for salvation means that praying is more important than doing all possible good works. It is better to give five minutes of your entire life praying than to do all these works consistently and heroically. This is misanthropic fanaticism carried to the extreme. How people can claim to be humble while claiming that by praying they have done the main good work is amazing.

 

Thanking God for the good things in your life insults those who suffer. You say they suffer for a good purpose. But why thank God when the good things you get may not be intended for you but are just sent for a good purpose for other people perhaps people living hundreds of years from now? When God may not be giving them willingly then why thank him? You are insulting sufferers for their suffering is reckoned to be for a good purpose while your blessings are taken to be gifts from God and not mere stepping stones to something better if not for you then somebody else. Believers want sufferers to believe their suffering is for a reason. Suffering people are supposed to think that the pain that is more real to them than God should exist to please this being who is less real to them. God knows he will benefit from their pain but they are not as sure so this is a totally selfish one-sided arrangement on the part of God. Believers pray principally that sufferers will learn from their pain. That is outrageously self-righteous – it amounts to wanting God to make them suffer so that they will be as holy and superior as themselves while they don’t suffer themselves.

 

Opponents of prayer in schools think it is an invasion of the rights of the child for religion and faith and prayer should be personal matters. It has not occurred to most of them that prayer is more than tramping on the toes of a child but exercises a poisonous insidious influence.