Alma 31:15-17 -- On A Bad Example of Prayer

"Holy, holy God; we believe that thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy, and that thou wast a spirit, and that thou art a spirit, and that thou wilt be a spirit forever.
Holy God, we believe that thou hast separated us from our brethren; and we do not believe in the tradition of our brethren, which was handed down to them by the childishness of their fathers; but we believe that thou hast elected us to be thy holy children; and also thou hast made it known unto us that there shall be no Christ.
But thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever; and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by thy wrath down to hell; for the which holiness, O God, we thank thee; and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us, that we may not be led away after the foolish traditions of our brethren, which doth bind them down to a belief of Christ, which doth lead their hearts to wander far from thee, our God."
Alma 31:15-17



Let's be clear right off... this is definitely not a good prayer, or one that we should be saying. :) This is the prayer that an apostate group was saying... everyone repeating the same thing, word-for-word, from the Rameumptom (a high place which would only admit one person at a time). They also obviously were denying Christ... so, it is a *bad* example... but maybe in looking at a bad example, we can learn some things about why it is bad, and what to avoid.

The first thing that strikes me about the whole thing is that it is pretty empty. It doesn't have a lot of meaning to it other than praying to counter what other people believe... so that is probably a good place to start. If we're grateful to God for hating some other group and picking us over them, then we're probably off the mark... also if we're praying negatively about something someone else believes rather than positively about what we believe, could be another sign that we should rethink our position.

The most glaring thing to me (other than denying Christ) is the lack of personalization. Repetition can be good for some things, like when we are learning to pray, and in ordinances, which need to be done the same for each person. In general though, repeating the same thing everytime can get us into a rut where we end up not actually meaning what we are saying, but just repeating it. As we talk to God in sincerity, we learn more and grow closer to him, so limiting our personal prayers to a pre-set script like that seems not only dangerous as far as sincerity, but also unnecessarily limiting in terms of having new topics available for discussion. :) Conversations with God should be about what is in our hearts, which might not always be covered in any pre-set script.

Today, let's try to get away of some of the bad habits illustrated in this example of a poor prayer, and work on our sincerity and true communication with the Lord instead. :)