Prayer and Liberation

One of my theological heroes died this week: Walter Wink--who taught at both Union and Auburn Seminaries in New York and wrote some of the 20th century's most important theology.  In an essay called "Prayer and the Powers," Walter wrote this:

"Prayer is never a private inner act disconnected from day-to-day realities.  It is, rather, THE INTERIOR BATTLEFIELD where the decisive victory is won before any engagement in the outer world is even possible.  If we have not undergone THAT INNER LIBERATION in which the individual strands of the nets in which we are caught are severed, one by one, our activism may merely reflect one or another counterideology of some counter-Power.  We may simply be caught up in a new collective passion, and fail to discover the POSSIBILITIES GOD IS PRESSING FOR here and now.  Unprotected by prayer, our social activism runs the danger of becoming self-justifying good works.  As our inner resources atrophy, the WELLS OF LOVE RUN DRY, and we are slowly changed into the likeness of the beast.

"Prayer may or may not involve regular regimens, may or may not be sacramental, may or may not be contemplative, may or may not take traditional religious forms.  It is in any case not a religious practice externally imposed but AN EXISTENTIAL STRUGGLE AGAINST THE "IMPOSSIBLE," against an antihuman collective atmosphere, against images of worth and value that stunt and wither human life.

"Prayer is the field hospital in which the spiritual diseases that we have contracted from the Powers can be diagnosed and treated."

Thanks be to God for Walter Wink and all the pioneers of prayer!