How does the Serenity Prayer fit into that?
Reinhold Niebuhr who was one of certainly the great theologians of the 20th Century allowed individuals to know that there was only so much that they could do in their lives to overcome certain problems and that they had to give up their foibles, their physical failings, their spiritual failings to God. “Please help me, God, to overcome what I can overcome. Help me to be able to deal with those things that I cannot overcome.” It was probably the first time that prayer was written certainly of the magnitude that this prayer took on that really tried to deal with the human condition in a very realistic way. It was not varnished with a coating of everything’s gonna be okay. It was really trying to deal with real life problems and how to be able to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. I think this also might be a fitting place to talk about the origins of Christian Science We spoke earlier about muscular Christianity in which there was this notion that you needed to be hearty in body, mind,
