The spiritual abuse of, ‘Oh, you just need to pray more!’

More abuses are done when people open their mouths than we realise. Take the case of someone ailing in grief, or someone triggered into a post-traumatic stress response, or someone who just cannot beat the suicidal ideation circling in their mind. The phrases, ‘Oh, you just need to pray more,’ or ‘trust God more,’ or ‘stop thinking about it so much,’ are at best unhelpful, and at their worst they are stigmatising, traumatising, and therefore abusive.

When a caring person says such things, we can say they’re misguided, spiritually immature, and lack a significant portion of life experience.

But frequently people say these things because they do not care, even if they think they do care. These people are the most dangerous, because they refuse to see what must be seen. They are ignorant to the possibilities that they could be wrong.

Sometimes people say these kinds of things because they themselves are tired, and compassion fatigue has driven an ability to care far from them. Their discernment in such a season has gone awry. Perhaps they have cared too much for too long. There are many reasons why good and caring people become too tired to care.

It can surely help anyone on the receiving end of abusive advice to consider why their advisor has given such poor counsel.

Perhaps the only thing that can alleviate the hurt and betrayal experienced because of such abuse is to attempt to understand and empathise just why the other person has said what they’ve said. There is always a reason why they have said what they said. Maturity on our part suggests we at least attempt to understand their position.

Let’s now deal with the facts. Are any of the complex issues of life actually fixed with prayer, in and of itself?

Prayer is something we are called to do as an act of faith.

Even to imagine that prayer can change something that we want changed, in other words, that we have control over the things we pray about, makes of prayer a way to manipulate God.

Think about it for a moment. If anyone suggests that anything that happens to us happens because we don’t pray enough, or don’t pray the right things, or don’t pray in the right way, makes of prayer some human divination—that by our prayer we can bring about our own will, and conform God to this will.

Think about how silly this is. The will of God will never be changed. We are fools if we think we can manipulate God to our own ends. The testimony of life attests to this.

Does prayer in and of itself solve the complex, or even the simple, issues of life? No, it can’t. It’s not the purpose of prayer to cavort with fortune. The fortunes of life much of the time are but an enigmatic anathema. We only need to suffer loss to understand this. Anyone who has travailed with mental illness, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive and anxiety disorders, and many other complex health issues knows that prayer is futile as a reliable change agent.

But the faithful pray to God,
because the call of faith is to pray anyway.

Engaging in prayer has nothing to do with changing God’s mind, yet it has everything to do with acknowledging that thanks and praise are due to God no matter our circumstances. Prayer is an admission that we’re not in control. It’s also our opportunity to petition God, but we submit our plea in utter dependence. Prayer is a language we use to communicate how desperately despairing we feel when change and loss and grief occurs to us. Prayer is the way we’re comforted. We feel God hear us. Do we pray believing God can act miraculously? Yes, of course, but we juxtapose such an attitude of prayer with an acceptance we can’t twist God’s arm.

Whenever anybody says anything to us about our role in disconnected misfortune, they are engaging in spiritual abuse; for example, accusing parents of being at fault for having an autistic child; that it was their ‘sin’ that caused it. Such a thing said is positively abhorrent. How on earth would anybody have anything to respond to that? Anyone hearing such garbage would be forgiven for being left jaw ajar. Such things said warrant no response, for people who say such things won’t be convinced otherwise. Unless we can say something to make them reflect, the cause is pointless.

Whenever you hear something like, “Oh, you just need to pray more,” you have just heard someone totally discredit themselves spiritually.

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash