Does God answer our prayers?
A popular conception of prayer is that if we have faith in God, pray diligently and if the cause we are praying for is a righteous one (like the health of another person), then God will intervene in a supernatural way to make our wish come true. Many people can site examples where their prayers "have been answered" in such a miraculous way. But why do many other equally deserving prayers go unanswered? When we delve deeper into this topic, we may discover that we are asking the wrong questions.
Thinking of prayer as a mechanism to compel God's action presents several difficulties. First, the idea that God intervenes in the world because of our prayers raises the centuries-old problem of theodicy (discussed in my earlier post here). Why would God intervene in some cases but not in others? Innocent people -- including heart-breaking cases involving children -- experience tragedies, suffer and die by the thousands around the world every hour. If God acts in a supernatural way when we ask through prayer, why wouldn't a loving God go ahead and prevent whatever the bad occurrence is from happening in the first place?
Second, doesn't this view of prayer violate the scientific principles that govern the universe? Is it not a leftover conception of God from an age in which people performed rites and rituals to please the gods who controlled what we now understand as natural occurrences -- the weather, illness and fertility? As our scientific understanding of the mechanics behind the universe has grown, the spaces in which God can act on the universe have shrunken. Scientific theories like quantum mechanics, chaos theory and evolution teach us that not only is the world unpredictable but the inherent chance and probability within the universe is necessary to its creative process.
A third problem arises when we consider the psychological aspect of this view of prayer. As humans, we have a powerful ability to control our environment; we have also evolved a psychological need to exercise this control. Is prayer (like ancient ritual sacrifices) nothing more than a psychological crutch that gives us the illusion of control over forces in the world that we do not and never will have control over?
Fourth, when we examine the scientific data on prayer as a mechanism to influence outcomes, the results are not encouraging. One meta-study that examined ten double blind scientific studies on prayer involving 7800 participants found that "overall, there was no significant difference in recovery from illness or death between those prayed for and those not prayed for." (See Cochran Report). Another meta-study at Syracuse University came to the same conclusions: "The effects of distant intercessory prayer are examined by meta-analysis, and it is concluded that no discernable effects can be found." (Syracuse Study)
How do we explain then the cases where people are miraculously healed from terminal illnesses after being prayed for? Because randomness and chance are inherent mathematical and physical qualities of our universe, both positive and negative events will simply happen over time. Just as we should be cautious assuming that the bad things that happen to us are divine punishment for our misdeeds (the story of Job teaches this lesson explicitly), we should exercise similar restraint in attributing God's deliberate action to the good things that happen. Did God really select a certain musician to win a Grammy award or a certain football team to win the Superbowl?
Medical studies are done as double blind experiments (neither the doctor nor the patient know if they are receiving the real treatment or a placebo) because the human mind has the incredible power to heal the body on its own. The placebo effect is often as powerful as many of the drugs we take to cure our illnesses. Give a patient a sugar pill and tell them it is a stimulant, and the patient's heart rate and breathing will increase. They'll report feeling more awake and full of energy. If the pill is red, the effect is even greater! The more confident a doctor is in delivering the pill, the stronger the placebo effect in the patient. Seen in this light, the mechanism behind faith healings can also be understood as the power of the human mind.
Do the above problems with seeing prayer as divine intervention mean that prayer is a pointless exercise? Not at all. Maybe we just need to rethink the purpose of prayer in a modern world.
Instead of seeing prayer as a method of asking God for something we want (even if that something is good), maybe we can use prayer as a way of opening up ourselves to God. Prayer can become a means of connecting us with the divine ground that is the essence of existence. This model of prayer requires a different model of God for our modern world. As I discuss in a previous post (Re-imagining God), if we conceive of God as the creative power that gives rise to existence itself rather than a supernatural being who resembles Zeus on Olympus, then God encompasses (and is the source of) the physical laws that govern the universe as well as space, time, matter, and energy that define the universe.
This different model of prayer leads us in several directions:
1. We can use prayer as a way of opening our hearts to God, not as a being living in an extra-dimensional heaven, but as the wellspring of creative energy within us and the universe. By quieting our minds, we can open ourselves to experience this divine ground directly. This experience may even lead us to new conceptions of our place in the universe and give us a way of transcending our own suffering. When bad things happen to us and our loved ones, we can find comfort in prayer that God is with us always, not sitting in judgement of us up in the sky, nor are we pawns in a cosmic chess game made to suffer according to some divine plan. This is the path that mystics across the world's religions have sought for thousands of years.
2. We can use prayer to center ourselves, to accept who we are, and to become more present and aware. Various forms of meditation and centering prayers fall under this category and are practiced across religious traditions. Unlike intercessionary prayer, contemplative practices have been shown to have significant medical benefits to its practitioners. (See e.g. Harvard Medical School's Herbert Benson: stress, depression and even many physical diseases are positively affected by meditation and prayer).
3. We can use prayer as a way of expressing thanks. We can recognize that we are not independent, but dependent creatures, and be thankful for the blessings we have. Through thanksgiving we can begin to realize that we have enough, and that our societal pressure to always want more (money, power, sex, material items, etc.) will never bring true happiness.
4. We can use prayer as a method of forgiveness for both the things we have done in our lives and for the wrongs we feel have been committed against us. Many psychologists would say that healing cannot happen without forgiveness.
5. We can use prayer to connect with others. We may pray for someone in trouble and wish them well, without the expectation that a supernatural intervention will make this so. Instead, the prayer for others may be about connecting with what that person is going through, with becoming empathetic with their experiences, and with expressing compassion. This connection with others will be strengthened as we realize that God who is the spark of our being, is also the spark of theirs.
Many of you may think that re-conceiving prayer in this way is not new at all. You are right! The themes contained above -- openness to that which is greater than we are, contemplation, thanksgiving, forgiveness and compassion -- are traditional Christian themes. I have only tried to emphasize in a new light how we approach prayer through these themes in a modern world.
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"We'll pray for you." Gee, thanks.
It was nice that it was noted and is most important to understand that both prayer and worship open up the channels and build the relationship between you and your loving creator.
As Paul said "Be prayerful at all times." That is my goal and when he said prayer I interpret as be in communion with.
The evidence is that their lives fall far short of the NEW TESTAMENT quote that Jesus came to make our joy fuller. Never happens, because everyone gets shortchanged in this world thru poverty and illnesses.
This fact of life is totally ignored by Churches who promote their religions.
Prayer is a way to cope with this. Do you have better solutions? Cynicism and jadedness I have found do not help, because then all joy, pleasure and happiness are looked upon with suspicion.
17 October 2011 Last updated at 20:27 ET
Church HIV prayer cure claims 'cause three deaths'
By Andy Dangerfield BBC News, London
At least three people in London with HIV have died after they stopped taking life saving drugs on the advice of their Evangelical Christian pastors. The women died after attending churches in London where they were encouraged to stop taking the antiretroviral drugs in the belief that God would heal them.
"We see patients quite often who will come having expressed the belief that if they pray frequently enough, their HIV will somehow be cured," she added”, said Prof Jane Anderson, director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV, in Hackney.
...hmmmm I'm still not having a problem.
Why all the confusion? Attending places called church yet the leaders have no idea who God is.
So they pass down the "NO" knowledge on to others who also become lost. WOW!!
Sure anyone can read but do we under what we read. Plus we have a BIBLE......BUT....!
Now the leaders of so called church does not have any idea what the spirit of the book is, double wow. Of course we are not talking about all of the church.
Then how do we get a good vision of this BOOK?
Ah........God said, "If you are going to worship me, it must be TWO WAYS - in spirit and in truth(word-bible)" Spirit first, then the truth(word-bible). No spirit, not understanding on the printed page.
You can't understand the bible unless you have the right spirit. NO CONFUSION HERE.
Jesus mentioned it many times. "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear."
What does that mean? You must do Rom. 10:8-10. That is crossing over a threshold into Gods Kingdom. No correct spirit, no correct understanding of this book. A very SIMPLE BOOK.
No short cuts, Adam and Eve already tried.
The correct spirit takes away evil, hatred, insecurity, feeling lost, low self esteem and so on.
When a person beats on God's door and starts making requests, or demands, is he praying to a stranger, or to Someone with whom he is well-acquainted? When we ask in prayer, are we seeking to know intimately the One to whom we pray, or just asking Him to dispense blessings like a vending machine? We beat on His door, but do we even know the Person to whom we pray? Are we daily participating in the daily exchange of our nature for His? This is the crux of the Faith - whether or not we actually know the Living God, or I should say, that part of Him he has allowed us to discover - within the part of us we have allowed Him to discover, and to own completely. It is here we learn to accept and abide in God's will. Prayer is too often described as one-sided, to the point that we end up beating on a door that was never locked.
Not sure if I understand this sentence. Hanna's son *was* Samuel. Samuel was not replaced (well, maybe the prophet Nathan fulfilled his role when David was king). He selected the first two kings of Israel.
I disagree, lauram. I have free will in everything I do that's obviously reasonable. I don't have the free will obviously to be mean to people. I don't have the free will to impose things on people as I don't control anyone. I don't consider free will omnipotence. Omnipotence means if you want to be technical means: all-powerfulness: the possession of complete, unlimited, or universal power and authority." How you see free will as omnipotence is beyond me because having control over your life without anyone telling you what to do(within reason by means of not being mean to people)isn't universal power and authority. One is "all powerful" when it comes to free will because they have the choice of doing or not doing something.