Position of Prayer in Verses of Quran and Traditions: Stressing its Training - Oriented Approach

Human beings have always faced with various hardship and deficits, and while enjoying happiness and prosperity have experienced diseases, unpleasant situations and shortages. Whereas, extreme identity capacity differs from person to person, people react differently towards hardship and problems they face with. In this regard, based on their religious beliefs, real believers consider the hardship as a divine test. The proof can be seen all over Quran, wherein the hardships are referred to as tests for ordinary people, and even some more difficult ones for certain people who are closer to God. Of course, majority of the people who take these tests choose to be patient, and pray to remove the hardships or disasters sent to them by God. Though, the disasters are used for testing or evolving mankind, and they are ultimately in favor of him, many people cannot tolerate big problems; therefore, according to Quran the best way to encounter them is relying on prayer, whose philosophy is making human beings get closer to their creator to change their fate. It is worth mentioning that there are various interpretations for prayer in Quran. The greatest outcome of prayer is making mankind as close as possible to God, and its mere reliance on God. Prayer has various training implications in individual and social areas: mitigating pressures, cultivating self-sacrifice feeling, cooperation, physical and affectionate training, in addition to training individuals and society’s moral training.