When something bad happens, the very best thing a person can do is pray. Even when we must act quickly, prayer is possible if we learn to “pray without ceasing” lifting our feelings up to God with every breath. I had a pastor who did this very thing and to his last evening on earth, he was praying for all of his beloved people.
And yet when most Americans began to pray for a crisis in California, we were mocked. Why don’t we do something?
Leave aside the foolishness that assumes that because we are praying, that this is all we will do. A praying people is very generous with time, treasure, and talent. If all the Christian charity groups closed tomorrow, the face of social services would be much bleaker.
Despite this, the sneers continue. Does prayer do anything?
It does, if you know what you are doing when you pray. You cannot hit a homerun in football, because football is not baseball. Perhaps the worst song every written by an atheist says “Nothing Fails Like Prayer.” Listen if you dare, but if you trust me, let me summarize the complaint:
Prayer is asking God to do things. He does not do things. Stop praying and do it yourself.
Yet prayer is not simply “asking God to do things.” Prayer is talking to a person, an all wise person, a person in charge of a complex and interconnected cosmos. Talking to a person that is not a mere slave is not like pushing an icon on my phone screen. God has choices. If your relationship with God consists of asking God to do things, no relationship, not love, then you are a bad person.
You are a user.
Obviously the atheist song about prayer failing is wrong in one straightforward way: Prayer changes me and changing me does something! When I am forced to pray for love for my enemies, this changes me. Often I become more loving, calmer, and more focused. Everything I do improves as a result. A sad thing about being an atheist is that you cannot pray.
If I am told “this is a placebo effect,” I say: “Great! Why does the placebo effect work?” Why can my mind control my body? Why does prayer and mediation have as good an impact on me as many drugs? The placebo effect, and the opposite the “nocebo” effect, is a bit like instinct . . . a word to describe an amazing thing that is not understood with a smart sounding word.
The reality is that the mind can handle immaterial ideas and impact the material brain. Ideas are immaterial, mind is immaterial, and yet the mind interacts with the body even to the point of “rewiring” the brain or healing the body. There are limits to what the mind can do, but prayer helps focus the mind by putting us in contact with Mind.
Even if this is wrong, it is a helpful sort of error! Believe it and be healthier. The better news is that best reason shows that God exists. Prayer is to a person. Does prayer do anything other than in me?
Of course, prayer does. If prayer is made public, then it helps my community. It is an expression of solidarity and love. How can that do nothing? An atheist might respond that he can show sympathy for someone else, but not in the same way. A theist experiences a deep communion with God. The atheist can only say: “it is all in your head.”
The theist responds: You mean like all my experiences? There is nothing I experience that is “not in my head.” Touching this keyboard, on the magical Microsoft Surface, seems external, but the experience is in my head. The Internet atheist has a weird double standard for ideas that are religious. He somehow (magically?) knows they are not what they seem. When I hear God speak, it is a different experience than just “talking to myself.” This is true of millions of people and no philosopher or scientist has given you a good reason to doubt it.
You pray to God and God hears.
The entire argument against prayer is that we pray and we do not get what we ask God to give us all the time or “greater than chance.” Think about this for a moment. If I ask God to make the coin land “heads,” why should God answer this prayer? Why should he suspend the laws or regularities of His nature He has put in place? What would the implications be to the rest of the cosmos if God did so? Every action is so connected that one chance word can undo a nation . . .
I pray for rain in humility . . . not because I think God should take rain from someone else or mess up the world so my crops would grow. God made the good world and the order and I thank God for that order. I also know that when God can . . . God will give His child what the child wishes. There are singular events, when God decides to act, that cannot be explained by the laws of nature, but only by nature’s God.
What do I pray when a shooting occurs? I pray that the hurting are comforted and the sick healed. Are they? How would I know? How can I know what would happen if nobody prayed when people are surely praying? If it means that I can merely pray and gun violence will cease, then I have prayed foolishly. How would that work? Would God suspend free will so that my prayer could be answered? Would God do work He has called me to do so I do not have to do it?
It is right that we should not just pray, but also work. My Christian college taught me in its motto: work and pray. Yet God does answer prayer. Miracles happen. God gives His children what they ask when what they ask is what they really want. Jesus always answers “yes” when we pray in His name because He answers our real prayer. If I love my children, and I pray for God’s best, then God does not mind my saying what I think is best . . . if it is best in His plan, then He will do it. He will even allow my prayer to be part of the trigger for the event. I have seen God immediately heal people, deliver them from deep problems instantaneously, and provide for physical needs. None of this short circuited the need for us to participate in God’s plan.
God does miracles and does answer prayer. Ask. If you pray many times for a new car, then you will not generally get a new car. Why would God do this thing? But I saw my Dad give away our car to somebody who needed it, tell nobody, and about the time our car was to be taken away, God told a person to give Dad a new car. Is this chance? How often are people given free cars from people across town? How often is this when they have (for the only time in their lives) given away a car?
You cannot “study” a singularity. Miracles happen.
So I pray for the hurting in California and I am confident that God will do good, allowing me to participate in His plan. Would He have done good if I had not prayed? He would have done good, but a different good. My prayer allowed me to participate in the good. . . and so it is different for the person and for me. We cohere in the good thing God does.
I need to pray . . . it is good for me and good for the world. Let us pray.
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