On Prayer

The Three Kinds of Praying Men

A reflection from EPIRIPTO · 6 min read

Most men haven't stopped believing in God. They've just never been taught how to actually talk to Him.

There are three kinds of praying men. Almost every man alternates between the first two without ever finding out there's a third.

The Performer

This is where almost every man starts. He says grace before dinner. He goes to church, mostly for his wife, mostly for his kids. He believes—ask him, and he'll tell you God is real.

But he has never once, in private, said out loud what he's actually carrying. The job he's afraid of losing. The anger he can't explain to himself, let alone anyone else. The father he's afraid he's turning into.

His prayer is a performance for an audience. It has never once been a practice for himself.

The Self-Reliant Man

At some point, a lot of Performers quietly give up. Not out of rebellion—out of drift. Church stopped feeling relevant. Prayer stopped feeling like it did anything. So he replaced it. The gym became his liturgy. The inbox became his discipline. He got very good at fixing things himself, because he stopped believing anyone else—including God—was actually going to.

He's often more honest than the Performer. At least he's stopped pretending. But he's carrying everything alone now, and calling it strength.

The Practicing Man

Almost nobody talks about this one, because it doesn't look like either of the first two.

He's not performing for a wife or a congregation. He's not white-knuckling it alone either. He prays—actually prays, specifically, about the real thing—not because he was raised to and not because anyone's watching. He chose it. A practice, not a mood. A discipline, not a feeling he waits to arrive.

Most men have this backwards. They think the goal is to grow out of needing this, the way you grow out of training wheels. It's the opposite direction. It's not something you graduate past on your way to becoming a self-sufficient man. It's something you have to consciously come back to, usually after you've faked it for years or quietly dropped it and told yourself that was maturity.

A provider is still provided for. Strength was never the absence of needing something. It was always being honest about what you need, and bringing it to the one place built to hold it.

You don't need the right words to start. You need to stop pretending you don't need to.