There’s just no response to this…
June 6, 2007 by Laura | Trackback URI
A recent conversation at my house, prior to family prayer time:
Me: Hon? You think you could maybe try to not say “Lord” every fifth word? Is that a Baptist thing, or what?
… long pause…
Him: It helps me to focus my attention on the One to whom I pray.
Me: Is your attention span that short?
Him: Huh? What?
That verbal tic that so many Christians have when praying out loud - using filler words like “Lord,” “Father,” “Jesus” just drives me nuts. Is it petty? Yes. I hate that I even notice it. But after a few minutes I find myself listening and counting; making mental bets with myself about just how many times the pray-er will use their particular filler word. I have to suppress my smiles at our bible study group. In my mind, I hear the crowd roar and the announcer says, “27! A NEW record!”
[Sigh.] Doubtless I’ll need to repent of this too.
To help focus attention? Oh, that helps. I thought it was just part of “Christianese”. You know, where “wordagod” is another word for “the Bible”, where “Father God” is His first and last name, and where prayers are only effective if you use the proper terms … repeatedly. “Helps focus attention.” Never thought of that one.
(You call it a “verbal tic”. I call it a “vocalized pause”. And I don’t like it either.)
Oh my gosh, I couldn’t stop laughing when I read your list. “wordagod” !!! Classic.
He was really stretching to find some reason why he does that, and he finally just decided to be facetious. He’s actually gotten much better since I drew his attention to it, but he admitted it’s a struggle.
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. Q.E.D.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Can’t argue the facts. God doesn’t exist and your wasted time would be more appreciated if it were directed towards holy actions versus all your holy words.
Talk about wasted time - do you often evangelize for your non-God on Christian blogs?
Appreciated by whom? And if God doesn’t exist, thereby making it impossible for me to please Him, what do I care about what other people might think? And on what do you base the assumption that I’m not directing my time toward holy actions? And why are you worried about what I believe anyway?
That said, I like Douglas Adams too.