"Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them"
About this Quote
Prayer, in Hammarskjold's telling, is not a celestial customer-service line for the appetites we dress up in piety. The line lands because it strips away a familiar rhetorical trick: swap "I want" for "Dear God", and pretend the request has been morally upgraded. Hammarskjold, a diplomat who spent his life negotiating between nations with competing demands, recognized the human talent for laundering self-interest. He aims that insight inward. Spiritual language can become a badge that flatters the speaker, turning desire into entitlement and faith into leverage.
The phrase "human animal" does deliberate work. It refuses the comforting myth that our motives are naturally elevated just because we can speak in ideals. We hunger, fear, cling, compete. Hammarskjold doesn't demonize those cravings; he demotes them, insisting they remain what they are even when they pass through religious vocabulary. The real target is spiritual opportunism: using God as a witness for your case, a guarantor of your preferences, a cosmic ally in your private negotiations.
Context sharpens the edge. As UN Secretary-General during the early Cold War, Hammarskjold operated in a theater where every side framed its interests as justice. His private writings often emphasize humility, self-scrutiny, and the danger of confusing vocation with ego. The subtext: if you cannot tell the difference between petition and projection, you will mistake your impulses for divine guidance. Prayer, then, becomes less about getting and more about being corrected - a discipline that interrupts the animal, instead of sanctifying it.
The phrase "human animal" does deliberate work. It refuses the comforting myth that our motives are naturally elevated just because we can speak in ideals. We hunger, fear, cling, compete. Hammarskjold doesn't demonize those cravings; he demotes them, insisting they remain what they are even when they pass through religious vocabulary. The real target is spiritual opportunism: using God as a witness for your case, a guarantor of your preferences, a cosmic ally in your private negotiations.
Context sharpens the edge. As UN Secretary-General during the early Cold War, Hammarskjold operated in a theater where every side framed its interests as justice. His private writings often emphasize humility, self-scrutiny, and the danger of confusing vocation with ego. The subtext: if you cannot tell the difference between petition and projection, you will mistake your impulses for divine guidance. Prayer, then, becomes less about getting and more about being corrected - a discipline that interrupts the animal, instead of sanctifying it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Prayer |
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