why pray

God Is Arbitrary, and That Is Terrifying [Questions That Haunt]

October 26, 2012 By Tony Jones 20 Comments

Lisa Mamula posed the challenge this week for Questions That Haunt Christianity. She asked,

I’m a Christian, but I have lately been struggling with a question: Do I believe God is Good, or do I believe God is just good to me? I see my life as having been blessed and guided by God into many good things (great husband, amazing kids, food to eat, etc.), but I struggle to reconcile all these gifts with the lives of those in extreme suffering and poverty. I’m not sure how to trust God with my everyday, (relatively) minor needs like relief for sick kids or financial problems. Why would I be rescued, when God didn’t rescue Holocaust mothers who watched their babies used as target practice? I believe in God. I believe he is Good. But I don’t know why I believe that.

Lots of you left many interesting and thought-provoking comments, and Lisa chimed in as well. It’s been a great discussion to watch.

At the core of your question, Lisa, is how arbitrary are God’s actions of beneficence (or tragedy)? This is a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately, for it sits at the heart of the book I’m now writing, Why Pray?

It seems that we have a choice: God is either arbitrary and therefore terrifying, or God is predictable and impotent. Here’s what I mean:

When Has God NOT Answered Your Prayer?

July 27, 2012 By Tony Jones 1 Comment

The readers of this blog have been extremely helpful as I’ve worked through issues around prayer, in preparation for my next book, Why Pray? Thanks to those of you who answered Do You Pray? and for those who told me about a time when God Answered Your Prayer. (Those are still open, if you’d care to contribute.)

Now, I’m interested in hearing When God Did Not Answer Your Prayer? And also, what you did with God’s non-response? That is, how did you reconcile your understanding of God with God’s silence in the face of your request?

Filed Under: Prayer Tagged With: prayer, why pray 1 Comment

Has God Answered Your Prayer?

July 23, 2012 By Tony Jones 4 Comments

Hundreds of readers weighed in on my question, Do You Pray? For that, I am very thankful.

As I continue to work on my book, Why Pray?, I’m wondering if God has answered a specific prayer of yours.

If God has, I’d love to hear the story. If you leave it in the comments of this blog, it’ll be public. If you share it in the embedded form here, it’ll be between you and me.

Filed Under: Prayer Tagged With: why pray 4 Comments

Do You Pray?

May 17, 2012 By Tony Jones 24 Comments

I’m at the early stages of a book called, Why Pray? Why Some People Pray, Others Don’t, and What God Has To Do with It, and I could use your help. I don’t want this book to just be about why I do (or don’t) pray. (You’ll have to read the book to find out if I do or don’t pray.)

I’m happy if you’d like to write in the comment section about why you do or don’t pray, but I also want to give a confidential place for you to answer that question. There are pastors who read this blog and don’t pray — they’d probably rather not publish their doubts for all to see.

So, here’s a form where you can contribute your thoughts to my writing. And, in advance, thanks.

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Filed Under: Prayer Tagged With: why pray 24 Comments

Thinking About God’s Creation

May 16, 2012 By Tony Jones 29 Comments

Autumn Evening on Eagle Lake, by Courtney Perry

I’m thinking and reading a lot about creation right now, in preparation for year two of the Christian Spirituality Cohort that I have the great joy of leading for Fuller Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program. (Another time I’ll write about what a joy it is to be in community with these 10 students.) In year one, Lauren Winner and I led the class through the history and theology of Christian spirituality; next year, Craig Detweiler and I will be teaching about spirituality, film, and fiction.

This year, my co-teacher is Brian McLaren, and we’re taking the cohort into the far north woods of Minnesota, to canoe in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, outfitted by Boundary Waters Experience. Our subject matter will be Christian Spirituality and the Doctrine of Creation.

One of the things I like most about Fuller’s DMin program is the aggressive amount of reading required of the students: 4,500 pages per year. That’s a ton of reading, especially for people who are working full-time jobs in ministry. It takes an enormous amount of discipline, but I have yet to field a single complaint about the amount from a student.

Just to make you jealous, the required reading list is below. I’ve broken the books into three categories, with Moltmann’s creation theology serving as our ur-text. Every one of these books is worth your time.

Who Thinks that God Is Still Speaking?

April 27, 2012 By Tony Jones 9 Comments

This post is part of the Patheos Book Club. Check out the Book Club for more posts on this book and for responses from other bloggers and columnists. And be sure to join the live chat with the author, 2-3pm EDT TODAY.

Some of us giggled a bit when, a few years back, the notoriously liberal United Church of Christ denomination inaugurated a marketing campaign with the tagline, “God Is Still Speaking.” What they were getting at is that God’s interest in contemporary issues didn’t end when the final book of the canon was penned.

But what’s ironic about the slogan is that liberal Christians are quite reluctant to affirm that God speaks to them individually. That’s the territory of conservative evangelicals, especially those of charismatic and Pentecostal stripes. Like, for instance, believers who attend Vineyard churches.

That’s exactly the group that Tanya Luhrmann studied and writes about in her excellent book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Seriously, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you like this blog, you should read this book.

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Filed Under: books, christianity in america, Prayer Tagged With: why pray 9 Comments

Finding Hope in Prayer #WhyPray

March 5, 2012 By Tony Jones 21 Comments

See below for a story about this photograph

So, I think I’m turning the corner. I think I’m finding a reason to pray.

Often what I do is write my way through problems, both spiritual and theological. That’s what I did in my very first book, and about half my books since have been in that same vein.

This book, Why Pray?, however, is the first that is attempting to solve what has become a vexing problem for me both spiritually and theologically. I have been struggling to find a reason to pray. And, thus, have been struggling to pray.

Every time I write about this, several will comment that prayer doesn’t need a reason. In fact, some commenters will imply that questions of this sort are unfaithful. Prayer is meant to be mysterious, they argue, and analysis of prayer ruins it.

I get it. They have a point. But I don’t think that looking for a rationale for prayer is unfaithful. I think it is faithfulness, at least for me. And I think that people like me — people with questions about the efficacy of prayer — deserve answers.

And, at least for me, I think I’m coming closer to an answer that will lead me back into prayer.

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Filed Under: spirituality Tagged With: why pray 21 Comments

Taking Prayer Beyond Cause and Effect (#WhyPray)

February 27, 2012 By Tony Jones 45 Comments

I’m hard at work on a book about prayer. I’m trying to establish a reasonable, rational explanation of why we should pray. About what prayer accomplishes. About what effect prayer has on the Divine.

One of the things it seems I have to get over is my very human predilection to understand things by cause-and-effect.

I’m not the first one to tackle this, of course. David Hume thought a lot about cause-and-effect, including this famous billiard ball analogy:

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Filed Under: spirituality Tagged With: prayer, why pray 45 Comments

Slacktivist Takes a Spin on #WhyPray

November 30, 2011 By Tony Jones 2 Comments

Fred, the Slacktivist, has a take-off on my almost-meme #WhyPray. And, I must admit, he takes it in a completely different — and hilarious — direction. We pick it up mid-post:

So for the prayer above, I substitute a prayer macro — a single, short phrase that can be employed to stand-in for the prayer in its entirety. Unlike software macros, creating prayer macros requires no special computer skill or knowledge of Perl or Java. Prayer macros are easily created by prayer. Simply arrange with God ahead of time that when you recite the prayer macro, it will be understood as a recitation of the longer prayer in full.

Thus when I drive past a stranded motorist, I don’t need to repeat the full prayer above. I simply invoke the appropriate prayer macro — in this case, “Oh, poor bastard” — and God hears the rest.

Thanks to the use of prayer macros like this one, I find I am able to pray without ceasing in less than half the time that used to take me.

Here are some additional examples of prayer macros I use regularly to help make my prayer life more efficient. Feel free to adapt any of these for your own use as you see fit.

Read the rest to see some examples of Prayer Macros: slacktivist » Achieving spiritual efficiency through prayer macros.

Filed Under: Prayer, spirituality Tagged With: why pray 2 Comments

Why Pray? [POLL RESULTS]

November 17, 2011 By Tony Jones 19 Comments

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hate binaries, too. I’ve written whole chapters arguing against binaries. But sometimes they’re interesting, at least as an intellectual exercise. And they’re definitely a conversation starter.

Over the protestations of some commenters, I asked readers to take a poll yesterday, and the results are really surprising to me: