Don’t Pray For Me

I am finally convinced now, more than ever, that saying “I will be praying for you” is another way of saying “I cannot offer any meaningful help, so I can just convey that I felt a little bit sorry for you.” Saying, “I will be praying for you” independent of any kind of action such as:

• Offering a listening ear or a word of real encouragement
• Committing to take the time to work through the problem if it is an interpersonal issue
• Offering to help by dedicating measurable time or effort towards problem solving
• Offering resources or to render material aid or services

Now, more than ever, if someone I know well ends a difficult conversation with a cheerful “I’ll be praying for you!” it feels like a dismissal at best and slap in the face at worst. It conveys the least amount of effort towards empathy and consideration that could be offered next to offering none at all.

Don’t pray for me. I don’t believe in your God. I don’t rely or depend on him. Save your pious platitudes and sanctimonious pity. I solve my own problems. Always have, always will. I am able to do this because I am alive, and the people who work with me and have an understanding of their own worth, responsibility, and agency are also alive and thus capable of paving a path towards a meaningful future.

We still do not know what makes a living being “alive”, but we know that the religious explanations offered so far do not adequately explain this miracle. Gods were invented by human beings so that they could explain things that were inexplicable, but outsourcing your locus of control to forces you cannot see, hear, feel, or comprehend, things that are not observable in material reality, may lead to temporary feelings of safety and catharsis, but we all know how much confusion and destruction has been wrought in “The name of God.”

I think, also, some of the most egregious poverties of compassion have occurred when “good” people have turned a blind eye to suffering, instead leaving the solution to their community’s problems in the hands of “heavenly authority.”

It may be tempting to try to offer people you love comfort by saying you will be praying for them, but I believe that most people would be much more satisfied if you asked them what you, the human being they can see and/or hear, can do for them during their time of great suffering, rather than just telling them it’ll all work out alright and that “God’s got it.” Even when I still believed in the Christian God, it was much easier to experience what I perceived as God’s compassion operating in a human vessel, especially when I “felt separated from god” than it was to try to imagine some invisible connection to a force I had never truly experienced.

Now, almost 5 years into my deconversion, I am now seeing acts of genuine human compassion in a warmer and richer hue than I ever had before. Now, seeing the objective goodness of human beings, and knowing that those acts are emanating from an earnest human heart—and not being bolstered up by divinity— I have an intense appreciation for the depth of love that can be found in humanity.

Similarly, when I see or experience acts of incredible, intolerable ingratitude, greed, and cruelty, I have to recognize that those too, are human traits. We all have a part of us that is a little animal, a little savage, a little over-eager for tribalism and bloodshed.

Morality and virtue are not things that we can gain by osmosis through repeated religious rite or ritual. Being brave, prudent, and virtuous involves putting real energy towards improving ourselves and our relationships with the human beings around us. It takes stepping out of “me” and stepping into the shoes of “the Other.” Salvation or, “redemption”, is not something that happens to you or a gift you can acquire with no effort; we all must participate in our own salvation and self-discovery. We must all decide whether or not we will give time and attention to the people, places, and things we claim to value.

I know that those who offer thoughts and prayers mean well, but it can feel so insulting when the people saying those words are fully aware that they offer no comfort to me, an agnostic atheist, only a slightly soothed conscience for the person doling out the rote response.

It’s incredibly insincere and self-serving to give a gift to someone that only serves yourself. I have decided to finally stop allowing people to make me feel guilty for not taking their back-handed compliments, refusing to take responsibility for their thoughts and feelings, or for immediately rejecting their unsolicited advice. I also refuse to chase the affection of people who don’t take no for an answer and do not respect my boundaries, people who, on some level, interpret my adamant “no” as an enthusiastic encouragement for them to needle, neg, nag, and badger me until it becomes a “yes.”

I don’t want to carry the cross of peoples’ misguided expectations. It’s one thing when people refuse to accept you for who you are—they really are not obligated to do so— but when they continuously and casually refuse to acknowledge it, it’s nothing more than gaslighting and emotional abuse.

To all to whom it may apply: I am done carrying your burdens and taking responsibility for things that have far more to do with you than they do with me.