Prayer doesn't work - dominee
2011-03-01 11:28
Dominee Albert Cruywagen discusses his beliefs about prayer, and how it should be reinterpreted in a way that works. (Wayne Coetzee, Beeld)
Neels Jackson, Beeld
Johannesburg - Praying in terms of requests to God doesn't work, believes Dominee Albert Cruywagen of the NG Church Riebeeck Park in Kempton Park.
That is why he says the church should reconsider the issue of prayer as it does other issues of faith.
As an example, Cruywagen mentioned the prayer that God should protect you in your car on the road.
It doesn't work like that, he said, as he knows of three families who prayed to God to protect their children and each of these three families had lost two children in road accidents.
In the same way it doesn't make sense to him to pray for rain.
Meditation
He doesn't believe that God interferes in weather systems. There are huge natural forces determining these.
Cruywagen pointed out that this doesn't mean he wants to stop praying, but that these prayers should be supplemented with other content.
If you go onto the road, he explained, you have to be alert. That is why you must pray that the Lord will make you careful.
"Actually I'm therefore talking to myself," said Cruywagen. Prayer is to him inherently a discussion between the self and God as the listener.
Seen like this, prayer is very meaningful to him. In the same way as the Eastern tradition of meditation, he believes people should spend more time alone with God.
Prayer is to him one of many religious concepts which need new interpretation "in a way that works".
How people understand God
At the heart of the matter is the way in which people understand God. He has stepped away from the traditional theistic view of God, which many religious people still hold, and has called his approach a new theistic view.
Cruywagen does not think, however, that he is undermining the church - on the contrary. Whereas some people see his views as the Trojan horse within the NG Church, he thinks of it as the knight on the white horse coming to the rescue the church.
For instance, he knows young people who want nothing to do with the church, but in a different way want to hold on to God. They can relate to his way of thinking.
He said he still stands by the Bible as the word of God and the confession of faith.
Although he sometimes gets some ugly opposition from Christians, he says his congregation understand him and are not bothered by his manner of thinking and praying.
