Religion, Worship, Prayer

 A couple of friends lately have brought up the subject of prayer and worship with me, and I rather like one of the answers I've typed out, so I'll share parts of it. 

First, context. I was raised casually-Christian. In that I understood I was a Christian, I went to church a handful of times a year with various family members, but I didn't really have any active worshipping or churching happening in my life. I also occasionally went to synagogue or temple with various friends or classmates. I went to school with a lot of Jewish friends, so 7th and 8th grade meant a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs (is there a collective term for that?). I went to a Baptist summer camp, and was baptized at least a couple of times (I'm pretty sure I was baptized as a baby, too?).

As I got older, I learned more about other religions, both real-world and fictional.  I took a couple of cultural anthropology courses, which were enthralling for examining religions from without. Sci-fi and fantasy fiction world-building have to include religion as part of those worlds, and often include a lot of thought and discussion about how a particular religious view can influence entire moral structures and behavior mores. If you ask me now about my guiding faith, I'll point you toward IDIC (https://meronym-thoughts.blogspot.com/p/idic-infinite-diversity-in-infinite.html). Yep, that's from Star Trek.

I went through a period of several years where I was vehemently Christian. I was at church several times a week, listened to Contemporary Christian music, and all my social circle was folks we knew from church.

Now my social circle is predominantly pagan or atheist. I don't attend church, but I'd still identify as by-default Christian, if only because the Christian God is the representation of Faith that I know the most about. Most religions have a lot of similar teachings that basically roll up into a few pertinent points, though expressed in a variety of ways. Things like:

- Be Good to Yourself

- Be Good to Other People (Love Others)

- Follow Just Laws (and sometimes Resist Unjust Rule)

- Be Less Destructive (Do No Harm)

- Make the World a Better Place

So I'm pro-religion, but I'm not really set on any particular one, as long as it teaches people to think about others and to do better. 

Religions also generally teach their followers that they should make some effort to communicate with That Which is Greater than themselves. That idea usually falls under worship and/or prayer; sometimes it's meditation or something else. 

Some people need a Holy Book to read and a name of a person to pray to, while others do better just thinking outside themselves in a more mundane mindset. Holy texts are the written-down understanding of God's directives by the people who hopefully understood Him best. My standing is that they have passed through too many human hands and minds to be as infallible as we're taught to regard them. But reading them should help you to improve (though never perfect) your own understanding of what God wants for you and of you.

Worship and praying are things (a) God asks of his followers, not because he needs it, but because they do. The act of praying and worshiping changes the person doing it. The worshiper is supposed to stop thinking 'I want' and 'I need' and start focusing on 'my God wants me to have' and 'God wants me to do'. Sincere prayer is not placing an order with God to fulfill your wishlist, but submitting your will to someone who want more and better for you, beyond your understanding. When you worship, when you pray, you are intended to be letting go of yourself and relaxing into what your God (or the universe) wants for you to have and do and be. I would consider praying or worship to be forms of meditation, with the idea that meditation is simply connecting in some manner with the universe. My strongest form of worship has always been anchored in music - I can feel so much deeper when I'm singing my worship.