I forget passwords quite often. There are just too many websites, cards, and accounts requiring passwords and some are quite picky about what kinds of passwords you can have (capital letters, numbers, special characters, etc.) My work email requires me to change my password quite often and won’t let me repeat old ones. It’s quite a challenge trying to think of new variations of familiar phrases.
So I sheepishly click on that link of shame, “Forgot your password?” and go through the tedious process of resetting my password.
But sometimes it’s not so easy. Bank accounts or other secure data require more hoops to jump through, and I wonder what I was thinking when I chose a security question that has at least a dozen possible answers (my greatest moment: one security question simply said “I am” – “vague and forgetful” was not the answer).
Ah, the good old days when the only password we needed to know was “please.”
“Please” got us through many cheeky requests, siblings’ doors, and family dinners as children. “Please” was the magic word that moved mountains – or at least, the reluctant parent into getting a pet.
Maybe that’s why we use it so much in prayer. “Please be with us today… please bless the food… please heal this illness.” We use it like a password to answered prayers; If only we could phrase it correctly, we will access that account in heaven.
But the irony is that the word has been misused and overused so that it is also just tacked on in the beginning of phrases in prayer as space holders. And rather than adding elements of sincerity and humility, the word just denotes another thoughtless repetition rather than a prayer.
An interesting book Debt: the First 5,000 Years analyzes the usage of “please” and “thank you” in society and comments that those words reflect the “democratization of what was once a habit of feudal deference: the insistence on treating absolutely everyone the way that one used only to have to treat a lord or similar hierarchical superior” (Graeber, p 123). In other words, the original literal meaning of “please” was “you are under no obligation to do this.” However, “etiquette largely consists of the exchange of polite fictions… by attaching the word ‘please,’ you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is” (Graeber, p. 124).
Have our prayers been reduced to formalities that expect answers if expressed with passwords like “please” and “thank you”? Do we see God as an equal who should respect our rules of etiquette?
What would happen if we self-imposed a temporary ban on the words “please” and “thank you” in our prayers and instead talked to God with genuine desire to build an authentic, transparent, intimate relationship with Him?
What would our prayers sound like then?
I know mine would suddenly focus less on what I want and wanted and more on who I am and He is – and who we are together. Maybe something like, “Today, I was really impatient and judgmental. I’m so grateful You don’t treat me the way I sometimes I treat others. How do you love so patiently? How can I be more like You?”
Perhaps as we truly open up to God as to a friend, the trite, polite “Hi, how are you? I’m fine, thanks, and you? ” talk common with acquaintances would be replaced with the honest, heart-felt, run-on-sentence-y conversations where silences, emotional outbursts, and laughter are acceptable.
Then perhaps when we finally do say, “please,” it will be cried out in hunger for righteousness. When we finally say, “thank you,” it will be whispered in awe of His grace.
So the forgotten meaning can be retrieved.
by: Jinha Kim
"But those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14