Why do people pray? I don’t mean whether we should pray or whether prayer is effective, but why do people pray? What’s the logic? Prayer is something that sometimes doesn’t make sense in an immediate way. We often hear things like, “I’ll pray for you,” or, “I’ll pray for such and such a thing.” Maybe this is because a friend is going through a very difficult time, or maybe you really want some particular thing to happen, like getting a new job that would change your life or finding love. In any case, these are intercessory prayers where we ask God (or whoever you pray to) to intervene in some particular way. This is a fairly common practice across cultures and even across religions, but does it make any sense?

Well, consider who you are praying to. You’re probably praying to an omnipotent God, who is essentially the first cause of everything and has the power to do just about anything. You want him to address some need of yours, and so you ask him to. But of course, he doesn’t need to do anything. I’m fond of saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. God has his own plan, and one doesn’t easily change his mind. In fact, many theologies would assert that God doesn’t change at all. When Christians pray, “Thy will be done,” it’s important to realise that this is not an allowance nor is it granting God permission to do whatever he wills, but it is simply a statement of fact. God doesn’t need to do anything he doesn’t want to do.

So what is the point of praying for things? Can you change God’s mind? I’m not very interested in these questions, per se. There are a variety of philosophers and theologians who have pondered them for a long while, and if you’re interested you can look them up, but to be brief, one response that has stuck with me is that of Blaise Pascal, who suggested that God gives us the “dignity of causality” and sometimes makes his action dependent on someone praying for it. Is this correct? Possibly. I’m not sure there’s any way to know for sure, but what seems perfectly obvious at any rate is that humanity’s practice of praying in this way precedes an indisputable rationale for it. Like so much of theology, our practice predates our justification for it.

The truly interesting question, then, is, as I’ve said, why do we pray this way at all? How does this practice come so naturally to human beings despite the fact that it’s not immediately sensical? I suppose this is more of an anthropological or psychological question, so I’ve quickly wandered out of my depth here. However, philosophy still has a thing or two to say about human nature, so I will venture my guess. It’s entirely possible that this is some feeling instilled in us by God, but this is shoddy evidence that God actually exists.

It proves nothing about the world, after all. I can imagine that I’m speaking to someone right now if I was desperate enough to talk to someone. This can be a helpful practice, of course: “Empty Chair” therapy, or the practice of imagining you’re speaking to someone in an empty chair, is a useful tool for processing your emotions towards them. If you’ve ever been through a tough break up and written letters that you’ve never sent, you would know what I mean. There is something cathartic about it, and perhaps this same principle is at work when we speak to God since it’s not often that someone literally hears God’s response. Is prayer simply a manner of surrendering and processing our desires to a higher power? Perhaps it is this, but I think we can go even deeper because even people who lack strong religious conviction pray sometimes.

This one staunch atheist I know once asked me to “put a word in” because they needed it. I was surprised at the request. Of course, I complied, but you see: I believed in what I was doing whereas this person did not. At the very most, he was sceptical that it would yield any results. Heck, even I’m sceptical, so I dread to think he would be any more optimistic than I am. Nevertheless, this was their request. Perhaps they had a moment of humility: “maybe I’m wrong.” Or, perhaps they were at a point where they needed some kind of support and were left wanting. For the purposes of my question, this is the more interesting possibility.

Life, not unlike anarchy, is chaotic. It is in fact remarkable how fragile the world is in many ways. Consider what it is like to stand on the edge of cliff, and think about what it would need to happen in your life to tumble over the edge and fall down towards the bottom. All it takes is a little push. In such circumstances, it’s tempting to seek order and security of some kind, and we can do this in a variety of ways, but for those who have little, there is but one last hopeful possibility: that God intervenes. Here, of course, I’m uninterested in whether or not this is true or what it says about God. Sometimes it’s easy for it to seem as though God is there while at other moments God seems a naïve fairy tale. So, what does this say about man? Primarily, I think, it shows that even at our lowest, we are eminently hopeful. We seek order, desire connection, and crave happiness and fulfilment. Prayer is our sword and shield in pursuit of these things, and what’s more, it’s free! It exemplifies our restless longing even when we have little else. So, try it, or don’t try it. Just whatever you do, understand that it’s all too human and that it’s not in bad taste to be hopeful.