The One Thing Progress Cannot Do

It is common among Orthodox teachers to identify prayer with the “one thing necessary” that Christ speaks of in John 11. This emphasizes prayer as communion with God – for communion with God is the very source of our life. I will expand this meaning of the “one thing necessary” to include the very “mind” required for its practice. And, as we shall see, it is strikingly at odds with the habits of our culture. Prayer has become perhaps the most difficult of all spiritual activities.

There is a very popular strain of teaching about prayer that resonates well with contemporary culture. This is prayer that “gets results.” Every few years, a new book will hit the market, offering a new prayer and promising wonderful outcomes. The Prayer of Jabez was a popular example. But even within Catholic Tradition, various groups advocate certain prayers or spiritual practices with promises of great results. Within Orthodoxy, certain saints gain great popularity because of their association with successful prayer. I note these latter examples only to say that “getting results” has always had an attraction for people of every mind.

Almost humorous have been the occasional experiments to find out if people praying as a group, or praying in a particular way, would have a statistical effect on outcomes. The headlines will ask, “Does Prayer Work?” And, of course, there are the frequent calls for prayer across a wide-spectrum with the implied message that the more people who are praying, the more a thing is likely to happen. This is prayer by democracy.

Experience tells me that this is simply not true. Such prayers are often little more than “well wishes.” “We’re sending out prayers to you!” the message reads. What does that possibly mean?

St. Paul often includes requests for prayer in his letters. Years ago, a Jesus freak buddy told me that he was praying for St. Paul —–. Startled, I asked him why? “Well, it’s in the Bible, so I thought I’d do what he asked.” I actually liked his answer. But missing in the Scriptures are any indication that prayer “works” in a manner that is more effective when undertaken by large groups. “Two or three” is pretty much the upper limit.

The mystery of “answered” prayer is indeed great. What seems most true, in the experience of the Church through the centuries, is that the prayers of some individuals seem quite effective, and that this mystery is also bound up with what we mean when we call someone a “saint.”  And it is the mind of such saints that holds my interest at this point.

St. Paul says, “Have this mind among yourselves,” and then describes the self-emptying of Christ on the Cross (Philippians 2:5-11). This “self-emptying” mind is the hallmark of sanctity and is at the heart of what we describe as “humility.” It is the humble heart that pleases God, we are told, whereas, God “resists the proud” (James 4:6). And it is at this particular juncture that modernity and its drive for progress are unmasked.

“I want to be a better man,” sounds like the words of a saint’s heart. But the opposite is true. St. Paul was such a “better man” when he was a Pharisee that he later described himself as “blameless.” That blameless Pharisee, strangely, had made himself the enemy of God.

It is the same St. Paul who writes with such eloquence and care about our weakness and sin. I have written previously that we are only saved “in our weakness.” Christ has not come to save the righteous – only sinners. By the same token, we are not saved through our excellence, nor our mastery of life. Those who imagine their life as a striving for progress and excellence risk making themselves the enemies of God. Fortunately, most of us are unable to be excellent, though our failure often only leads to despair rather than God.

There are recorded a number of examples in the gospels of those who came to Jesus and were refused. The man who came to Christ and wanted Him to make his brother divide the inheritance with him is simply rebuffed (Luke 12:13). In a similar fashion, Christ refuses to answer the questions of those who only seek to trap Him with His own words.

St. James offers a brief commentary on such refusals:

You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask badly, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (Jam 4:2-3)

All of us can think of many egregious examples from our own lives and those of others when our desires overwhelm us and our prayers. I can think of any number of times in my life that I prayed with great fervor for something that, in hindsight, was simply born of my desire to avoid the anxiety I suffered by not having it. And this is very much to the point.

St. James’ observation could easily be limited to those examples that seem obvious: greedy prayer gets nowhere.  But his principle runs much more deeply. We will not be saved by getting what we want. The only creatures in the universe who get what they want are demons – indeed, they have largely become nothing more than a “wanting”: their rationality has almost completely disappeared.

True prayer is a movement into ever greater self-emptying. It is the normative means of our daily union with Christ. Like Christ, it broods over the lost and those who are in bondage. True prayer willingly enters with Him into Hades (both literally and figuratively) to intercede for those who are held captive. St. Paul even willed that he himself be damned if it would mean the salvation of Israel. That is the heart of Christ.

No doubt, our modern world will continue to “make progress,” at least in its own mind. But those who adopt that mind for their Christian worldview will find themselves frustrated at every turn. The caricature that is the so-called “prosperity gospel,” with its boastful and begging TV preachers, is modernity at prayer. It builds empires on the sandy soil of people’s desire for progress and the promise of the next new formula. Such prayer does not make us holy but draws us deeper into delusion.

From earliest times it has been clear that religion exists to serve the desires of people. Whether averting disaster or procuring success in agriculture, fertility, or war, every religion attends to those things that fill our human desires. It comforts those whose desires have been thwarted and assures them that everything will someday be well.

I have termed this “religion.” As such, the Christian faith is not a religion, except when it has been hijacked. It is worth noting that this hijacking is a constant threat and is universal. No group of Christians is immune from the lure of religion. [I will note here that both A. Schmemann and John Romanides, and others, have used the word, “religion,” to describe this deformation. Obviously, the word can be used with other meanings.]

Christianity is not a religion. It is a spiritual path towards union with God. Jesus did not come to usher in a new system of how to get what we want. He “emptied Himself,” and repeatedly invited us to do the same. That emptying is the path of union, and the very definition of love. If unfulfilled desires can be of use to us, then this world becomes the perfect arena of our salvation. For, in truth, we generally do not have to become weak or incompetent in order to be saved. We already are. Those who are on the path know this and reveal it in their prayers.

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a retired Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America. He is also author of Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, and Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, as well as the Glory to God podcast series on Ancient Faith Radio.



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22 responses to “The One Thing Progress Cannot Do”

  1. Anna Avatar
    Anna

    Father, what you describe as the “prosperity gospel” is exactly what happened to me when I was in that type of church. Since my prayers never produced the “desired results” I finally left the church & God for seventeen years.

    But God in His Goodness & Mercy sent someone to me who renewed my interest & I went to a Greek Orthodox festival, saw some books on Orthodoxy and the next thing I know is that I was a catechumen. Then I entered the Russian Orthodox church and never looked back.

  2. Christian Hollums Avatar
    Christian Hollums

    Would you agree that the patristic tradition does not reject the notion of growth (progress) outright?

    Would you agree that human beings were created to grow / progress?

    Would you agree with this statement

    “Maturation is the pattern of salvation history and the shape of spiritual life—it is not a conquest, but a ripening made possible through God’s self-giving.”

    Is your primary issue with the word “Progress” the modern philosophical baggage that is assumed in its usage?

  3. Esmée Noelle Covey Avatar
    Esmée Noelle Covey

    In Wounded by Love, Saint Porphyrios says that if Christ wants him in hell, then that is where he wants to be. This made a profound impression on me the first time I read it. He also says that he never prays for specific outcomes, but rather for God’s will to be done. I have followed his example and advice ever since. I love praying the Psalter and the Jesus Prayer for this reason; both are simply asking for His mercy – and they help me trust that whatever His mercy looks like in my life is what is ultimately best for me.

  4. Anthony Avatar
    Anthony

    Thank you for this post, Father. Proper prayer is something, in my experience at least, that requires constant vigilance.

    When you mentioned people praying against disaster, war, etc., it made me think of a passage from St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. I’ve slowly been reading through his work On True Christianity, which at first I found difficult in a comabative/critical way but have come to deeply appreciate. He mentions calamities on earth as being the result of God’s chastisement, wrath, and judgement (specifically using St. Tikhon’s language), which are meant to bring us to repentance and engender empathy with others. In our secular worldview, I find people either don’t consider negative events as acts of God or would laugh to scorn such a notion. Even within Orthodoxy, it seems as if people are hesitant to see any action of God that might be perceived as negative by our limited reasoning. Considering all this, would you think it still Christian to pray for God’s deliverance from various negative events but, when they happen, accept them as God’s chastisement and providence? Thank you for your time.

  5. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    Father:

    I’m a bit confused by your article which seems to conflate the desire for progress with simple self-interest. Prosperity gospelers are by definition interested in their own material aggrandizement, not progress. Those who are greedy or who desire badly aren’t interested in progress either. These examples seem to equate progress with simple self-indulgence.

    But progress might mean finding a cure for some forms of cancer, or effective treatments for other kinds of illness or injury. That human desire, born of love of God and neighbor, to alleviate the suffering of other people seems perfectly consonant with Jesus’s healing ministry, his love for the suffering. How does the medical researcher’s prayer for wisdom and insight — for progress — miss the mark?

    You also write: “We will not be saved by getting what we want.” Is prayer only about being saved? If the medical researcher gets what she wants, she may not be saved but she may make real progress towards alleviating the suffering of others. The liturgy is full of prayers for seasonable weather, peace, etc. Doesn’t prayer encompasses a whole range of proper human desire?

    And when we pray for a young mother dying of cancer, should only 2 or 3, maybe her husband and her mom and dad, pray for her? Is asking an army of friends and family to pray simply prayer by democracy? I know you have suffered grievous loss yourself; I don’t ask this flippantly. I genuinely don’t know how you think about this.

    Forgive me, Father, if this comes across too sharply.

  6. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Christian,
    “Progress,” just like most words/things, has a good and proper meaning. The meaning was co-opted for the large part as modernity was being birthed. If you do a search on the history of that word in English, you can see how its meaning gets changed and co-opted. Originally, it meant to go from one place to another. Modernity co-opts the Christian narrative into a secular notion of worldly improvement as the means of creating a secular utopia. It now permeates our culture and our self-understanding.

    But, people grow, mature, change, etc. Obviously. It’s difficult, however, to use the word “progress” in such discussions or observations without inviting all the baggage of the heresy that dominates our Western world.

    There are others ways to talk about such things.

    The word “progress’ in its origin, means a journey from one place to another. The world is not heading anywhere. Technological change is not a narrative (unless you are watching Star Trek). It is just stuff happening. But the false consciousness that such changes are part of a story that arcs towards a better world is just mythology of the worst sort. It is the stuff told us by politicians and entrepreneurs.

    Because we believe so blindly in “progress” we’ve stopped asking very salient questions: will this use of technology hurt our children? (for example)

  7. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Anthony,
    Christ prayed, “If it be Thy will, let this Cup pass away from me…” So, it’s absolutely ok to ask to be delivered from evil, to be spared the test, to be protected, etc. Nevertheless, sometimes, we go to the Cross – and, even there, God’s good will is trampling down death by death. And so we give thanks always and for all things.

  8. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Kevin,
    In its positive form, the “army of prayer” is an expression of the greatest of our concern. It is not, however, a tool for effective prayer. Prayer simply doesn’t work like that (indeed, I think it’s probably wrong to think about how prayer “works”). But, our love asks others to pray with us. Human beings have always invented things. It’s good to have medical treatments – medicine and doctors, etc. are a gift from God:

    Honor the physician, for he is essential to you;
    for that profession was established by the Lord.
    2 The gift of healing comes from the Most High,
    and the king provides for the physician’s sustenance.
    3 His knowledge gives the physician high standing
    and earns him the admiration of those who are great.
    4 The Lord has created medicines from the earth,
    and no one who is sensible will despise them.
    5 Was not water once sweetened by a tree[b]
    so that his power might be revealed?
    6 He has endowed human beings with skill
    so that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.
    7 Through them the physician heals and relieves pain,
    8 and the pharmacist prepares suitable medicines.
    Thus, there is no end to the works of God,
    from whom well-being continues to spread throughout the entire world. (Sirach 38)

    But, everyone of us will die. Our modern world’s false notion of progress still imagines a world without disease and a life without death (and is willing to do bizarre things as a consequence). Indeed, our false notion about life and death has led us to kill people in order to relieve suffering.

    I am a bit cynical about our medical research – in that we speak in the language of compassion and work in the language of profit. It’s not compassion that drives the modern world’s love of progress – it is profit.

    “Is prayer only about being saved?” Yes, if you understand “saved” in its broadest, Orthodox meaning. Prayer is about union with God – we pray that He may dwell in us and we in Him. The great prayer for union (Jn 17) is quite revealing about this.

    It was always quite instructive to be praying at the bedside of those who were dying – I certainly prayed for healing, even there. Though, I understood that “healing” had a different meaning. Everyone has to die…but you don’t have to die “sick.”

    These questions can be delicate matters of the heart – perhaps I should write more and explore more.

  9. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    I may be dating myself, but I remember an old radio show by J. Vernon McGee. In the introduction he always declared with calm conviction, “… and prayer changes things.”

    I think this is exactly what you are getting at, Fr Stephen, the idea the prayer is “utilitarian” rather than relationship-building. It seems that everything in life is transactional, and I have (to my shame) used my spiritual practices to “bargain with God,” so to speak. *That* is the modern problem of progress, as I see it. (Let’s not mention how that problem has crept into my/our personal relationships as well…)

    Kyrie eleison.

  10. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Wow Justin … J. Vernon McGee!!! Didn’t he have a Bible bus? I remember him from my seminary days in the American South! Memories!

  11. Dee of Sts Herman and Olga Avatar
    Dee of Sts Herman and Olga

    Father,
    Due to some circumstances I have a tendency to ask for God’s help. Such prayer is part of communion yet it does differ from such prayer when I ‘sit’ in prayer and just be, and periodically say the Jesus prayer in gratitude. Praying and glorifying Him feeds the soul.

    Someone commented (not on blog) about extraordinary events in my life that have taken place over this past year. It was attributed to me. I corrected and attributed to Christ. Befuddled the person said that I was conjoined with Christ in the effort. And I accepted that response. Yet we are so drenched in the ethos of progress in this culture that it is hard to hear and speak in the language of the Cross.

    Thank you for this article. I’ve been bummed about my lack of progress lately. It’s a helpful and healthful realization that this is not the Way. It lowers my anxiety of my weaknesses. May our Lord grant us grace to rest in Him.

  12. Owen Kelly Avatar
    Owen Kelly

    Fr. Stephen,
    I wonder what the place of dispassion is in this discussion. Several of the Fathers hold this state to be paramount and closely connected to pure prayer. How does it relate to what you’ve written above?

    Concerning desire, it’s been said the most prevalent addiction of our time is the Internet, and the most prevalent kind of webpage on the Internet is pornographic. Most people reading this know by experience the power of pornography (if you don’t, you’re rare) to excite the passions and leave one craving distraction. And by distraction, I mean anything that stimulates mind or body, as opposed to that calm, still, quiet state of focused attention needed for prayer.

    Do you think dispassion is the death to which Christ calls us? If so, perhaps Jesus calming the turbulent sea waves is a picture of the Cross…

  13. Byron Avatar
    Byron

    In the introduction he always declared with calm conviction, “… and prayer changes things.”

    Justin, I think it is proper to agree that “prayer changes things”–but the thing it most changes is the human heart. I consider with sadness the people who, after a great tragedy, hold up signs degrading prayer and asking for laws. Laws do not change the situation because the human heart remains stone.

    As an aside on the “prosperity gospel”, we have a church here in Tulsa whose mantra is “God wants you to WIN!”. It’s very popular, I think. “Prosperity” comes in many forms.

  14. Owen Kelly Avatar
    Owen Kelly

    Well said, Byron.

  15. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Owen,
    Dispassion, yes. I prefer to think in terms of “nepsis,” that is, “sobriety,” not being driven around by distractions, anxieties, etc. I know that in my personal experience, I am far more vulnerable to every sort of temptation when I’m anxious.

    I love the example of the Mother of God at the Wedding in Cana. Her simple prayer to Her Son is, “They have no wine.” She trusts Him.

  16. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Byron,
    Our population/culture is filled with angry people – so we say lots of dumb/hurtful things. May God have mercy on us!

  17. Alan Avatar
    Alan

    “True prayer is a movement into ever greater self-emptying. It is the normative means of our daily union with Christ. Like Christ, it broods over the lost and those who are in bondage. True prayer willingly enters with Him into Hades (both literally and figuratively) to intercede for those who are held captive. St. Paul even willed that he himself be damned if it would mean the salvation of Israel. That is the heart of Christ.”

    Pure gold. Thank you Father.

  18. Alan Avatar
    Alan

    Matthew / Justin, I too fondly remember hearing that oh so distinctive voice of J. Vernon McGee on the radio!

    Esmee, beautiful comments. Thank you!

  19. Owen Kelly Avatar
    Owen Kelly

    Father,
    I agree about distractions. Apatheia is “inner freedom,” or “detachment.” Detaching from the distractions of “the world” is, somehow, I think, synonymous with attaching oneself to God. If we could just still our distracted mind, what is already there could shine.
    Thank you!

  20. Margaret Sarah Avatar
    Margaret Sarah

    Owen,

    Your comments makes me think of CS Lewis in his address The Weight of Glory:

    “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

  21. Owen Kelly Avatar
    Owen Kelly

    Thanks, Margaret. Lewis says it so well. I know I’m far too easily pleased.

  22. Owen Kelly Avatar
    Owen Kelly

    I mean, Margaret Sarah. Sorry about that.

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  1. Owen, Your comments makes me think of CS Lewis in his address The Weight of Glory: “It would seem that…

  2. Father, I agree about distractions. Apatheia is “inner freedom,” or “detachment.” Detaching from the distractions of “the world” is, somehow,…

  3. Matthew / Justin, I too fondly remember hearing that oh so distinctive voice of J. Vernon McGee on the radio!…


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