Over the last decade and half, the fourth Wednesday of September has been declared, “See You at the Pole” day. It’s the day that Christian students from around the country gather at their school’s flag pole for prayer. I’ve never been. Truth is I struggle with the concept and have had a difficult time reconciling it with the teaching of Jesus. I’m more than open to admit that maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the guy that has figured this thing wrong and will one day need to offer an explanation about the whole affair.
People are quick to ask me if I hold an inerrancy view of the Bible. I’m equally quick to recognize that inerrancy seldom means “perfect” according to those who ask me. It means “perfect” as they’ve interpreted it for me, and I’m usually pretty quick to say that we’ve bigger fish to fry. Besides, I don’t see much reason to elevate the Bible to the fourth person of the Trinity as an object of worship. Oddly enough, I might even argue that I care for the book more than the people asking me about inerrancy, which is why I'm careful not to use the word (which doesn't even appear in the Bible).
Jesus lays out some pretty specific instructions about prayer in the gospels. They’re about not making a spectacle of yourself or your prayer, or drawing attention to yourself when you pray. In fact, he distinctly urges us all to make prayer a private matter and offer up our words in our own closets, hidden away in secret. Bottom line is that I can’t find any evidence from Jesus in the scriptures that He’d be at the pole praying either.
I know there are some who have gone as far as comparing the “See You at the Pole” event to the pagan ritual of Maypole (which incidentally is where we got the whole “strippers on a pole” motif in today’s culture). Besides the fact that the solstices don’t line up at all, it just seems like a huge stretch to make these kinds of comparisons and the product of a hyper-sensitive culture that is dead set against the idea of Christians being in any public place at all. I am well aware that there is a certain tyranny of the minority at work in culture today, which basically ensures that I can’t live my faith out publicly at all in our culture without someone taking offense somewhere. Common sense, it seems, has passed us by.
I’ve got about a month to seriously contemplate this issue. In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing from pole gatherers how you see it and how you square it with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:5-6. Meanwhile, I've been asking myself about National Day of Prayer, which I traditionally do participate in ... can I do one without the other? Or is it time to apply the exegesis there also?
Seriously open to hear your thoughts, and certainly let's not start a flame war or I will delete the post.
