“We Treat God Like a Cow” – On Maturity in Prayer

I was reading George Guiver’s Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God, when I came across this challenging paragraph:

However much the modern Church says it believes in prayer, it so often behaves as if it has failed to surrender to God. The word “surrender” is shorthand for Jesus’ image of bride and bridegroom, and the total self-giving which is necessary in their coming together. Allowing God to be at the center is something we all fail to do. We fail to wait utterly on God, to surrender all to him, and others rightly see the Church as a busy, empty, vessel. For we can often go to him in prayer without any idea of surrender, or any notion of disdaining our own will in order to be open to his; we go to be fed and watered according to our requirements.

Meister Echkart, less polite, said we treat God like a cow. We go to church to milk him, so we can come away with milk with which to make butter and cheese. Yes, God has expressly told us to do this, and he indeed feeds us when we ask, but it is always distasteful to exploit the generosity of others on demand whenever we want, without a commensurate love which includes a surrender of self. We reassure ourselves that God always forgives and his generosity comes without any strings attached. But perhaps we do not reflect what a relationship based purely on receiving, taking, does to us. It is immature, leaving us incapable of sharing with the Giver those deeper things which can only come where two mature people trust each other and are familiar with being alone together. The Church as a body is shy of being alone with its Lord in that direct access we call prayer, and diffident about the referral of important things back to him.