Prayer Meeting Paradox (February 12, 2006)

I would like to introduce you to an effect that I have found so odd, so striking - and yet so common - that I have decided to give it a name. I'm going to call it the "Prayer Meeting Paradox."

I first became aware of the Prayer Meeting Paradox in 1989, when my wife and I and our year-old son were living in Costa Rica learning Spanish. On occasion Linda and I would hire a baby sitter and go see a movie. First-run Hollywood movies only cost about 50 cents, and they were in English. (We ignored the subtitles.) We only got to see about four or five movies during our year in Costa Rica, so whenever we went I looked forward to it as a real treat.

But, I confess, I was never that eager to go to a prayer meeting. It is not just that I was struggling to learn the language. It was more of - well, let's face it - a prayer meeting is something you go to out of duty, not because you can't wait to have such a good time. Frankly, I would have been glad to have an excuse not to go ("It's raining buckets tonight - even with my umbrella I'll get soaked. Better stay
home."). But if something prevented my seeing a movie, I probably would have been peeved. My problem is that by nature I am just not that spiritual. As C. S. Lewis once confided to a friend, "Being religious really goes against my grain."

But after going to a few movies out of joy and a few prayer meetings out of duty, I noticed an effect that amazed me. After a movie I'd leave the theater feeling either vague dissatisfaction or nothing at all. But after a prayer meeting I would have such a rush of joy it was like walking on air. Every prayer meeting left me exultant. This is the Prayer Meeting Paradox: you don't want to go, but when you do, you wind up being unbearably glad that you went.

I have experienced the Prayer Meeting Paradox many times since. Thursday afternoons in seminary, for example, I would drag my reluctant self over to the nursing home for prayer and Bible study with the old ladies - and then by the time our fellowship would end an hour later, it was like somebody (the Holy Spirit, I guess) had slipped me an Ecstasy pill.

There may be explanations, sociological and biochemical, to account for the Prayer Meeting Paradox, but I don't think they exclude this spiritual explanation: The devil does not want you to pray with people, and he tempts you to avoid such gatherings. But once he has succeeded in tempting you away, he has no reason to reward you with pleasure. You're like the male praying mantis who, having rendered his service, is chewed up and digested by the mate who cares nothing for his well-being.

God, on the other hand, delights to reward our obedience with some "after-the-fact" joy. But since he desires obedience for its own sake, the joy that follows must be a little elusive, not precisely sought after, perhaps dimly remembered, and experienced only as a byproduct. Were it not so, then our good actions (like prayer meeting attendance) would be mercenary. We would be lab rats pressing the "prayer bar" just for the release of sweet endorphins. God does not want behaviorally-conditioned rats though: he wants sons and daughters. To that end, the connection he establishes between obedience and joy must be nuanced, even a little paradoxical.

There is a way to test my theory empirically. But you have to drag yourself to a prayer meeting to find out.