A Cop out — and I agree

From Daniel Kirk:

Yesterday in the Twitterverse the following quote was going around:

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

It’s alleged that this quote comes from Kierkegaard, though I haven’t seen a reference appended to it anywhere.

The first time I saw the quote, I jumped into a good conversation about it. Then after the third time I saw it, I was done.

If I may put it provocatively: the quote is a cop out. It transforms prayer from a dangerous act in which we summon the God of all the earth to act now upon the earth over which God is sovereign into something that’s just for shaping our little hearts. This is the worst sort of existentialism working itself out in a theology of prayer. The real thing isn’t that God would be intimately involved in the real world, acting on behalf of those upon whom God has set God’s name. No, the real thing would be getting ourselves aligned with some transhistorical God who won’t be bothered to engage the lives of God’s people.

If Kierkegaard is right, Christianity is not worth believing, and prayer is not worth doing.

Ok, let me soften it a bit: it’s not “not… but…” but rather “both… and…”