Public Prayer

Why do people pray aloud? Are they really praying to God or simply choosing words for “people” to hear. I know when I was asked to pray aloud, I prayed for human ears. I could not help but think about what others were thinking about me and my holiness. As much as I wanted to, I could never drown out those thoughts. I felt like a hypocrite every time I was asked to pray. Whenever someone asked me to pray, they were forcing me to be a charlatan. Sunday rituals were also to blame for forcing hypocrisy. Now, I know that I am very introspective and have a tendency to think these issues out a little too far, but I can’t help but believe that others may feel the same way. It was not that I was embarrassed to pray it was that I have always preferred to talk to God in a personal way and not formalized. I once was asked why I address my prayers to Jesus and not to God the father. I was rebuked for this once by my own father. Yet, I prefer to talk to God as someone who is real and understands me. It is sometimes difficult to talk to God, THE FATHER, in this manner. I have also never understood praying to the Spirit…. without a name, and only a title, it makes communication even more difficult.
I believe that even saying grace at a meal has become ritualized and void of meaning for most people. Are they truly thankful when they pray, thanking God for their food? I can still remember my grandfather’s prayers over the family meal. He had a long version and a short version of the same prayer. The short version went like this… “Lord, we thank thee for this food. Make it useful and nourishing to our bodies. We ask for Christ’s Sake… [He would click his tongue here] Amen”. Now, I might have forgotten a line or two but it was practically the same at every meal. I loved my grandfather but I just can’t believe that he was praying to God but was praying for those present at the table. I believe he prayed (and many pray) before a meal as a ritual of thankfulness but not to truly talk to God. I also believe he memorized and ritualized his prayers not for God but because he was a quiet, almost shy man and didn’t want to mess up on a spontaneous public prayer. To screw up a public prayer before God is unthinkable. But… Why? When I pray, God understands and doesn’t condemn me. And that is the point. If we are truly afraid of making a mistake in our public prayer, this is a sign we are not praying to God but to people.
I believe another sign of fake prayers are when we change our English to the Victorian Times. We put in the thees and thous because we want to impress people, not God. If God can hear our thoughts, why would we revert to an unused language? I just don’t understand this. I believe that if we should pray, we should do it alone and not in public. I have no desire to impress people with my eloquent prayers and turning into a hypocrite which I loathe in myself. There is nothing more I hate about myself than when I am not genuine, a hypocrite or a fraud. I want to be myself… the good, the bad and the ugly. If God, and others, cannot accept me for who I am (faults and all), then they do not really love me.
And one last thought… If we pray to impress others and are not talking to God… are we not speaking God’s name in vain?