{"id":288,"date":"2011-08-31T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T02:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later\/"},"modified":"2012-08-07T21:44:46","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T01:44:46","slug":"god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html","title":{"rendered":"God Says Yes, No, or Maybe Later?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Today, Young Mom wrote<\/a> about how much more capable of caring for her children\u2019s sleeping trouble since she has stopped expecting God to step in and put them back to sleep. This made me think about my upbringing, and about my parents\u2019 approach to prayer, including with regards to issues of healing. <\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/div>\n
My parents always prayed for healing when we were sick, and they believed that God could and did heal. However, they also gave us medicine. They didn\u2019t simply count on God to heal us. And thank goodness, because children have died while their parents have held off medical care and waited for divine healing! Yet it strikes me that my parents\u2019 belief in divine healing is set up in such a way that its existence can never be disproved or even tested. Let me explain. <\/span>
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

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When my siblings were sick and took a turn for the better, my parents thanked God for healing (even when they had used medicine). And yet, when my siblings were sick and took a turn for the worse, my parents didn\u2019t see that as proof that God wasn\u2019t answering their prayers, but rather as evidence that God had <\/em>answered their prayer for healing, he had simply said no<\/em>. This deserves some background. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When I was a little girl, I wondered why God frequently seemed to not listen, or to ignore my requests. After all, the Bible promises that: <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Mark 16:17-18 \u2013 And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Matthew 17:20 \u2013 <\/span>He replied, \u201cBecause you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, \u2018Move from here to there\u2019 and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Luke 17:5 \u2013 <\/span>He replied, \u201cIf you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, \u2018Be uprooted and planted in the sea,\u2019 and it will obey you.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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I wondered, then, why my prayers often went unanswered, seemingly unheard. The Bible said that if I only had enough faith, I could literally <\/em>move mountains. I worried that my faith was not strong enough, since I could not do this (and I did <\/em>try \u2013 you all might have been trying out Harry Potter spells but at the same age I was trying to use faith to move mountains). <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
When I asked my parents about this, they told me that when we pray God sometimes answers \u201cyes,\u201d sometimes \u201cno,\u201d and sometimes \u201cmaybe later.\u201d In other words, when I prayed, regardless of the outcome,<\/em> God was answering my prayer. This strikes me as incredibly convenient. <\/span><\/div>\n

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For example, let\u2019s imagine there is a drought and my parents pray for rain. If it rains, God is answering their prayer! If it doesn\u2019t rain, God is answering their prayer! If it rains in a few days, God is answering their prayer! Do you see what I\u2019m saying? There is no way to determine if there is actually any action of God taking place at all, and there is no way to disprove whether God is acting or not. Furthermore, because he sometimes says yes and sometimes says no, God\u2019s answering prayer is essentially meaningless. <\/span><\/div>\n

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I wondered, as a child, what the point of prayer was if God was just going to do whatever he wanted to anyway, regardless of whether we asked. My parents told me that prayer was about keeping up communication with God, rather than simply about asking for things. It was about forming a relationship. And yet, God did want us to ask for things we wanted or needed. Bud didn\u2019t he already know what we wanted or needed, even before we asked, since he was all knowing? I asked. My parents told me that yes, he did, but he still liked to hear us ask. Sort of like a parent who knows what his five year old needs but still wants to hear him ask for it. <\/span><\/div>\n

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And yet, prayer could have a real effect. For example, if a great many people prayed, they could change God\u2019s mind. And sometimes, even one person could make this difference. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Exodus 32:11-14 \u2013\u00a011<\/sup> But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. \u201cLORD,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?\u00a012<\/sup> Why should the Egyptians say, \u2018It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth\u2019? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.\u00a013<\/sup> Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: \u2018I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.\u2019\u201d\u00a014<\/sup> Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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For this reason, my parents said, it was truly important to pray, whether it was for the end of a genocide or for political change. We were commanded to pray. Our prayers did make a difference. I am afraid to say that this still didn\u2019t make sense to me. The idea of God \u201cchanging his mind\u201d made no sense to me. After all, how can God \u201cchange his mind\u201d if he already knows the future? <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
In the end, I prayed first to form a relationship with Jesus and second because in many situations that was the only thing I could <\/em>do. I am convinced that that is one reason that prayer is so popular. When you hear of a horrible tragedy or when a loved one is sick, it is comforting to be able to pray and think you\u2019re making a difference. Except that (a) God might say no and (b) he already knows the future and that future is already laid out and (c) it makes no sense for God to change his mind. Some might say that perhaps the future he knows is contingent on our prayers \u2013 in other words, he knows that we will pray and because of that he knows that he will relent. But I\u2019m sorry, when you get to that point my mind gets twisted up with all the time travelling aspects. Also, that becomes very deterministic \u2013 it seems to eliminate free will somehow. Okay, now my brain hurts. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Back to the topic of healing. My mother once prayed over one of my brothers, who was very ill with a stomach flu, commanding the demons who were afflicting him to leave. He vomited and felt better. She shared the story over and over again, explaining that when she rebuked the demons afflicting my brother, they left him, causing him to vomit in the process. First, the reality is that when people have stomach flues, they sometimes throw up, and then they generally feel better. This is medical fact, not rocket science. Secondly, if my brother had not vomited or felt better, had his stomach ache only grown worse or held steady, my mother wouldn\u2019t have seen this as an unanswered prayer at all. It would have just been God saying \u201cno.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
There was a time when my dad made a weighty decision by laying out a \u201cfleece\u201d before God. He told God that if a certain person said one thing, then he would do what he was thinking about doing, but if that certain person said the opposite, he would understand that as God telling him not to do it. This certain person said the first thing, so my dad went ahead and made the weighty decision based on it, interpreting it as God telling him what to do. Following my father\u2019s lead, when I was in college, I made an important financial decision based on the fact that it was snowing when I woke up one morning. That\u2019s right, I told God that if it was snowing when I woke up, I would make one decision, and if it wasn\u2019t, I would make the opposite. I woke up and looked at the window, and behold! Snow! With that message from God, I made my financial decision. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Now when I think about this I am slightly horrified. Imagine if you told God that you would quit your job if the\u00a0macaroni\u00a0was on sale the next time you visited the supermarket. It will be either on sale or not, so regardless, God answers. God can\u2019t NOT answer in a situation like this. I have to ask: how is this different than flipping a coin? It\u2019s not. <\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Realizing all of this was a step on my path toward letting go of Christianity. I realized that because God might say either yes or no prayer was essentially meaningless. Furthermore, I realized that what I saw was no different from what I would see if there was nothing out there at all \u2013 some people got sicker and some got better, sometimes it snowed in the morning and other times it didn\u2019t. There was no difference. I realized that God could not possibly let me down, because the belief system was set up such that he couldn\u2019t \u2013 there was no obligation for him to answer my prayer, or indeed, do <\/em>anything. There was no part of my relationship and beliefs that could not simply be made up and all in my head.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Young Mom wrote about how much more capable of caring for her children\u2019s sleeping trouble since she has stopped expecting God to step in and put them back to sleep. This made me think about my upbringing, and about my parents\u2019 approach to prayer, including with regards to issues of healing. My parents always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nGod Says Yes, No, or Maybe Later?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today, Young Mom wrote about how much more capable of caring for her children's sleeping trouble since she has stopped expecting God to step in and put\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God Says Yes, No, or Maybe Later?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, Young Mom wrote about how much more capable of caring for her children's sleeping trouble since she has stopped expecting God to step in and put\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-01T02:08:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-08-08T01:44:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html\",\"name\":\"God Says Yes, No, or Maybe Later?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-09-01T02:08:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-08-08T01:44:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"Today, Young Mom wrote about how much more capable of caring for her children's sleeping trouble since she has stopped expecting God to step in and put\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/08\/god-says-yes-no-or-maybe-later.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"God Says Yes, No, or Maybe Later?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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