I know not all praying religions have their adherents join their hands, but I think it’s the case for most. Many cultures even use clasped hands in day-to-day life as a sign of deference or pleading (which I guess makes them “social prayers”).
My only ‘armchair anthropologist’ theory is that hands that are gripped together are unable to present a threat to you, so it is a signal of voluntary vulnerability. But that doesn’t make sense in a religious context (although it does in the social context), because how would you ever be a threat to any god in the first place? 🤔 If anything, you’re displaying arrogance by saying to god “yeah I COULD fuck you up, but just for this conversation, I’m gonna decommission my arms, arms which I have to register as deadly weapons by the way”.
A secondary question on this topic is what is the function of praying hands in the praying process? If you say a prayer without joining your hands, does it not reach god? Or does he hear it but he’s like “uhhh, excuse me?? Forgetting something? No childhood leukaemia cure for you, I guess!” like an overly-pedantic lawyer?
Third question: Do any holy books actually describe or prescribe ‘praying hands’? If so, what do they have to say about it?
Cheers! 🙏
I’m sure there was some bullshit reason back in the day that is lost to us now. When I was in Catholic school they told us it was to make sure the prayers went straight to heaven🙄
Here’s the thing I never understood. Your parents die. You’re at the funeral and everybody says “I bet they’re looking down from heaven at you, right now.”
So you’re telling me your parents die, they get up to heaven, somehow get notice about when their own funeral is despite not even being on the same planet, have the ability to watch from across the galaxy at any given time…and they choose to watch a bunch of depressed people in black suits cry over a box that contains their own corpse? And what about your grandparents? Were they watching over your parents before they died? What are they doing now? Is heaven so boring that it’s inhabitants just spend eternity watching various generations of families? And what happens if you never have kids? What do they do when you die? Do they watch someone else? Do they watch while you’re pooping? Do your dead ancestors watch you have sex, and know your kinks?
Yeah, religion starts falling apart real quick when you begin questioning things.
Apart from the Bible not saying much about the dead watching except from a vague
Hebrews 12:1 ESV
The idea of people looking down - while could be argued for in this verse - is moreso a human invention than scriptural in the case of Christianity. But the Roman Catholic Catechisms may have something to say about it