Prayer Not For the Self Alone

Update: Upon reading this blog post again, I realize that I did not clearly state my own view on prayer labyrinths. They indeed can be used for good, but I take opposition to the way their use was described in this article.

If prayer at its very base is a conversation, one would not get the clue at all in this article, from my hometown Denver Post. The article is about the small but significant resurgence of the ancient practice of prayer labyrinths. It's really a fascinating article, so if you don't read the article here's some extended quotations:

"The labyrinth reflects back to you whatever you need to discover," said psychotherapist and Episcopal priest Lauren Artress, who will anchor a conference on following sacred paths in Arvada on Jan. 15-16.

As a member of two professions dedicated to changing people, Artress considers the labyrinth to be one of the most powerful tools of transformation she has encountered.

"We're always told what to believe, what to do. We're told. We're told. We're told," she said. "The labyrinth evokes our own deep intuitive wisdom about ourselves. "...

Every sacred tradition uses the metaphor of walking a path to find one's spiritual center and to experience the divine, Artress said. To be human is to invoke symbols and metaphors. "You have a meaningful life when you live a symbolic life," Artress said.

One of two things seems to be happening here. Either Artress is misrepresented and under-quoted, or she's a pantheist. Her language certainly arouses suspicion.

A labyrinth helps you discover "whatever you need to discover." Also, Atress places a strongly negative connotation on the suggestion that we're always told what to believe. Those tellers must be ignorant or liars or both. After all, and this one's the kicker which makes me question her Christian conviction, the individual self knows what to believe. Some reactions:

Jesus told us what to believe about himself. Namely, that he was fully God in human form and that he came to die as a substitionary sacrifice for humanity. Is he a liar?

There's concrete truth in Christianity. God is creator and redeemer. He is three persons in one essence. Jesus was and is God, and is the second person of that divine Trinity. Shouldn't prayer be directed towards Him? And not to the self?

Furthermore, the notion that we ourselves are our own leader towards divine truth is outright idolatrous (Romans 3, Ephesians 2, John 6, and John 10). Even more, the idea that we are encouraged to "experience the divine" is imprecise and misleading. Quite frankly, it sounds too much like pantheism.

My purpose is not to embitter other seeming Christians against myself. My purpose is to point out a lack of truth and bring truth to it. The more fuzzy we are with our religious language, the less we actually believe in anything. Jesus and salvation ultimately will not matter if we don't actually know concretely what they mean. An experience with the person of Jesus still matters, but let's not elevate experience over knowledge in our quest for truth and understanding of God.

After all, what God has already revealed about Himself is sufficient.