[Caution: Rant follows]
Have you ever eaten with someone who proudly insists on holding hands and praying before very meal? Once or twice, I’ve prematurely taken a bite of food before the ritual prayer, which resulted in the retort, “What are you, a heathern?” (SP intentional). Apparently, praying before your meal is a requirement for salvation now.
When growing up, my family used to pray before meals, and we still do at those larger, more “important” family functions, such as holidays and the like. But I have to ask myself, “Why do we pray before meals?”
Aside from one vague reference in Bible, where we are told that Jesus “gave thanks” before breaking bread, there is no instruction, commandment or recurring pattern in the scriptures that would lead us to do so.
In fact, we are told that there was a ritualistic “washing of hands” that Jews performed before eating a meal, but Jesus and His disciples did not observe it. This incensed the religious leaders of Jesus’ day so much that they challenged Jesus on it. Taking a little liberty, I’ve replaced the reference to the hand washing ceremony with our modern “pray-before-you-eat” ceremony.
“Then Jesus was approached by a group of religious leaders from Jerusalem, with the question: ‘Why do your disciples break the ancient tradition? They do not pray before eating.’ He answered them: ‘And what about you? Why do you break God’s commandment in the interest of your tradition? You have made God’s law null and void out of regard for your tradition. What hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you: “This people pays me lip-service, but their heart is far from me; they worship me in vain, for they teach as doctrines the commandments of men.”’
He called the crowd and said to them, ‘Listen and understand! No one is defiled by what goes into his mouth; only by what comes out of it.’” (Matt 15:1-11)
Clearly, Jesus was not concerned with purification rituals, and saw nothing wrong with simply sitting down to enjoy a meal, sans religious pomp and circumstance.
What makes things even worse, listen to the language we often use in these before-meal prayers.
“Our heavenly father…” (Although God is neither a father nor lives in heaven, far, far away.)
“Bless this food which we are about to receive…” (As though God refuses to bless anything until we ask for it. Isn’t everything already blessed?)
“Nourish our bodies with it…” (As opposed to what? What would God have otherwise done with this food, had we not specifically asked him to nourish us with it?)
“In Jesus’ name, amen.” (The magic words. If you do not end a prayer with this phrase, God does not hear it.)
Doesn’t the entire earth belong to God and everything in it? This type of prayer comes from a presupposition that this food, like everything else in the world, is unclean until we intervene and by our simple prayer make it pure, ready for consumption. Why not just say a magic phrase over it? “Abracadabra, this food is now clean!”
In fact, these types of prayers announce to the world our SEPARATION from God and others. Rather than living all day with the constant awareness of God’s presence in us, we relegate our communication with God to a few times per day (if that much), during which we offer some memorized prayer by rote, then go our way once again. Further, our actions separate us from the others around us, announcing to them that we are somehow better than they, because WE remembered to say “grace” before we ate. Did YOU?
I think I would have less of an objection to a pre-meal prayer if we simply reverted to the famous children’s prayer, “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food.” I have no problem with acknowledging that “by His hands, we all are fed.” Just say, “Thanks.”
That is far less presumptuous than the idea that our food is somehow unclean (no doubt because it was prepared by “heathens”) until we ceremoniously and ritualistically proclaim it as “clean”. Who gave you the power to declare anything clean or unclean?
Then there’s the errant idea that we must INVOKE God’s blessing before He will give it — as though God is standing up in heaven with His arms folded, stubbornly refusing to dole out blessings until we first ask. Worse yet, that God exists to serve OUR wishes.
Finally, why must we make such a big show of it? By joining hands, bowing our heads and closing our eyes, it’s as if we’re announcing to the rest of the people in the restaurant, “WE are more holy than you, and our food more blessed than yours. You are heathen. We are not.”
The inward condition of your heart is far more important than any outward ritual or observance. And what comes out of your heart and mouth should be a source of blessing for everyone in the room, not a source of guilt, condemnation and separation. Why not simply live a lifestyle of quiet humility and thankfulness that draws people to you, rather than insisting on an outward, ritualistic ceremony that alienates?
But other than that, I have no feelings about this topic. 
[End of rant.]
Seriously, I know that we all have ideas and practices that need to be looked at afresh, through the eyes of grace, and from the perspective that we are all one with God, and He with us. I need help with my blind spots as well. So I will gladly bow my head, close my eyes and join hands in prayer for the sake of GRACE and PEACE.
Filed under: Musings |
I love your article. And by the way, here is a thought.
Suppose the cook prays that God will help her to prepare
something out of nothing in the kitchen. (which I do quite often) And God does prove in a very miraculous way that He is God, by helping that lady prepare a feast with only a little bit of this and that in the kitchen.
So, if that prayer is made in the kitchen wherein God answers and produces a feast… then you might say a miracle took place at the hand of God.
Prayer at the table for God to bless the food would be silly, because God already did His miracle in the kitchen. Prayers in the kitchen already happened! Therefore, the ones at the table should rejoice in shouting about how good the food is, and not pray for God to bless the food; because He already did!!
I pray we can learn to relax and enjoy the Lord, without worrying about little religiosities.
I hope your in-laws don’t read this blog of yours. I never liked praying in public for that reason.
I have no problem thanking God for his provision especially to show my kids that “by his hands we are all fed”.
By the way How many people have walked up to your table after you prayed at a restaraunt and threw themselves on the floor and begged for Gods forgiveness and mercy and please don’t send me to eternal damnation and torment.
Evangelizzzzze!!!
THANK YOU! I agree. Could this nationwide ritual, which my family always part took of growing up, be what Jung called “inflation” and/or what St. John referred to as…”the sin of luxury”…”overindulgence in the desire of feeling spiritual?” guess it includes the heart isssue also…meaning I continued the ritual with my children, but only out of guilt…and guilt is NOT of God. I personally believe ANYTHING that causes one to feel guilt is “sin.” But like I said, that is a PERSONAL feeling.
Sitting at Chili’s last night, while celebrating my birthday, I watched the group at the table next to us as they all joined hands, bowed and prayed over their meals. It made me uncomfortable and I’m a believer! But, I noticed a couple of them glancing over at us when we got our food, possibly to see if WE were going to pray or whatever. We didn’t.
I wonder how much of a tip that group left for their waitress? Did it demonstrate the generous heart of their ‘Father’ whom they just petitioned for a blessing?
Being thankful for our food and other grace-gifts is a good thing. “Thanks a bunch for this lunch” is an adequate mealtime prayer. But, even that doesn’t need to be an eyes-closed, hands-joined group ritual.
Maybe we SHOULD let the kids do our praying. Jesus did say that unless we become as little children, we can’t see His Kingdom.
I think the real core issue here is that most Christians (as in 99%) really believe that if they DON’T do these things they deem ‘required’ - like public mealtime grace - they will not be pleasing to God and therefore He will not bless them. At least not as much as when they DO all the right things. Ironically, God is really NOT pleased with this sort of legalism, because it makes our relationship with Him all about our own self-righteousness.
God is an extravagant, generous Giver who has made all things for our pleasure and declared that it is all ‘good’ and ‘very good.’ Why can’t we just receive His Infinite Abundance and enjoy all He has provided? Probably because our culture is conditioned to believe that all we have is from our own efforts and abilities.
“God IS great; God IS good; let us thank Him for our food.” AMEN.
This has always been a touchy/confusing subject to me-I’m glad to have stumbled onto (been led to, perhaps?) this page. We always “said grace” in my house growing up and still do for the most part. We also often join up in public at restaurants, but never with the intention of making others feel uncomfortable or heathenistic (a word?) or anything, really…it’s just always seemed like the thing to do. I also feel a closeness to my family when we do this. I totally agree with your ideas of how we tend to “bless” our food however…as though if we didn’t pray over it, it would cease to nourish, etc. Also, as prayers said often tend to do, there are rote habits we fall into without realizing it. I have definitely thought about the possibility of someone thinking I was being overtly religious, but I guess it fell under the category of not being ashamed of my faith when it came to prayer time. It just goes to show how easily we can become offended by or misinterpret each other’s ways of spiritual acknowledgement…it sounds as if all posters on this page are believers, and even amongst us there are annoyances (and in the case of your in-laws, judgements). I don’t know how to feel exactly, but it feels cathartic to write about it and I really appreciate all of your insights here. For the record, if you ever see me bowing my head for a few seconds (or minutes??) over my Quiznos sub, please take no offense and know that I’m just giving up the gratefulness…I tend to be a forgetful soul, and most times I’m just trying to stay in touch with God any way I can, even if it’s a little unimaginative. Much love to you all and thanks for keeping me on my spiritual toes!
Beautiful comment, Heather. Glad you found this page and our little “community”. I’d take no offense in a prayer of gratefulness over your Quizno’s sub (LOL), and I recognize that while I rant from time to time, the real key is whether or not we will extend the grace to each other to cover where we are on our own spiritual journeys. I feel grace in your comments. Thanks again.
I really agree with one of the first comments. RELAX.
Give thanks whenever you can.
The Lord is the one who looks at our hearts when we pray. We shouldn’t be judging others and saying
” they are making every one in the restaurant feel less-holy”
You have your own relationship with Christ!
Who cares what others think when you are praying and thanking God for those meals?
Didn’t King David say encourage believers to go out, yell at the top of our lungs, thank God all the time. He was a true worshiper.
Just be guided by the Holy Spirit.
I agree that prayer before meals shouldn’t become a tradition and not come from our hearts. LIke the prophet Isaiah said. But.. I know of many believers that truly thank God for theirs meals before or even AFTER their meals. For providing it for them.
I thank God as much as I can for what he gives me.
I think we should do it all the time.
Like I said in the post, I have no issue with simply saying, “Thank you” for what we receive. I am eternally grateful for all that God has given me and my family. Further, I think we should remain in a prayerful attitude, continually in communication (or awareness, as some would call it), with the Spirit.
This post simply pokes at two common attitudes that I have personally witnessed among folks who insist on praying before meals: 1) that this prayer makes our food “clean” and without this ceremonial blessing, it’s contaminated by the filthy hands of the sinner who made it, and 2) that this prayer sets us apart from the “world” as better than they.
Sadly, these two attitudes are far too common.
I’d rather talk about the football game with a stranger, and hopefully find something in common from which a friendship could be born, rather than praying before my meal and hoping that everyone notices my “witness”.
That’s all I’m saying.