“Praying people do not view prayer as a magic wand to wave over the world’s problems, but an act of humility that orients the heart and mind towards a more effective way to approach complex problems. It’s an admission of our individual limitations and an expression of hope that someone or something not bound by our present conditions can provide an answer that we can’t.”

Prayers offered in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting have inspired critics to call such petitions a waste of time and an empty gesture. But demands for less talk and more action reveal a dangerous intellectual hubris. Prayer isn’t the enemy of a solution to gun violence. It’s an essential part of the answer because it brings humility into a debate that’s paralyzed by arrogance.

Much of the “prayer shaming” ire has been directed at politicians accused of parading their piety when tragedy strikes while opposing laws and policies that could reduce gun violence.

But the dismissive view of prayer goes much deeper than a charge of mere political opportunism. These critics presume prayer is a waste of time and equate it with inaction. This attitude misunderstands the role of prayer.

Praying people do not view prayer as a magic wand to wave over the world’s problems, but an act of humility that orients the heart and mind towards a more effective way to approach complex problems. It’s an admission of our individual limitations and an expression of hope that someone or something not bound by our present conditions can provide an answer that we can’t.

To the faithful, prayer and action are not mutually exclusive, but go hand-in-hand.

Yet, a leading critic of prayer, Zack Ford of ThinkProgress, argues that, “It [prayer] is just nothing (and thus wasted time).” How does he know it’s nothing? According to Ford, “Studies on intercessory prayer have largely found that it has zero effect or only a placebo effect.”

This misses the point. Most praying people have no problem admitting that prayer is an act of faith. Nobody prays because they’ve seen social science research that proves it works.

But if praying requires faith, so does believing that social science research can prove whether or not there is a God listening to and answering our prayers. And it’s certainly an act of faith to believe that the answers to stopping gun violence are right at our fingertips, if only we’d stop praying and start acting.

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