Why Pray?

The question, “Why do we pray?” is one that has vexed me theologically and philosophically for some time.  Here’s why:

1) Prayer is not to change us.

I say this because it’s clearly not a biblical motivation for prayer.  Prayer is not therapeutic.  If it were, there would be no need for God, and we might as well be Buddhist.

I know a lot people talk like this about prayer.  They say that prayer is to “align our spirits with God,” and phrases like that.  But they’re wrong, at least biblically speaking.

2) Prayer is not to change God.

This is trickier to defend because this seems to be the biblical justification of the practice of prayer.  Jesus’ univocal teaching on prayer seems to be that we should knock until the doors is opened, ask until we receive, and seek until we find.  He compares praying to a man who keeps bugging his neighbor for bread until he finally gets a loaf.

My problem in this regard is more theological/philosophical than it is biblical.  I am tenaciously clinging to the idea that God is the one non-contingent Being in the cosmos.  God does not sit somewhere, with the power to heal Granny of cancer, only releasing that power if enough people pray.  This was the premise that undergirded Frank Peretti’s theologically shitty novel, This Present Darkness that so many of us GenXers read in high school and college.

If prayer is to change God, as Jesus implies, it seems to operate by some totally illogical economy: some people are miraculously cured without even a prayer uttered, and others who have whole mega-churches praying are left to die.  Further, if God is really outside of time (which I don’t believe, but many Christians seem to), why can’t we pray for things that happened in our past, but not God’s past?  Like praying for the earthquake and tsunami not to hit Japan.

Yet I know we need to pray — I need to pray.  I now pray out of obedience, because Jesus tells us to pray.  But I’d like a better theological rationale than this.  So this will be one of my primary goals for the three-year journey I’m taking with a group of D.Min. students at Fuller Theological Seminary.  I’m going to turn my attention toward this particular theological problem and attempt to find an answer that is theological, philosophically, and biblically satisfactory.

There’s still time to apply for the D.Min. cohort at Fuller, and you can join me next Monday on a campus visit day in Pasadena and a public lecture and discussion that evening.