The Redundancy of Prayer
1. Two men are lying in the hospital, both with the same disease and both with the same amount of time left to live. Being twins, these two men are prayed for by the same loved ones with the same amount of feeling and sincerity. One of the men survives and makes a full recovery. The other man dies in abject pain and misery.
Straight away a question comes to mind: Why did God answer the prayer with regards to one of the men but ignore the prayer for the other man?
While the answer tends to always be the same, we could briefly explore other possible options. For instance, we could possibly argue that the family doing the praying didn’t genuinely care as much for the man that died; God knew this and therefore didn’t take the prayer seriously. This suggestion would certainly seem to work well alongside various biblical statements that I shall address in #2 but doesn’t sound very reasonable when given serious thought.
The standard answer is this: “It was not God’s will”
What this means is that it was God’s will that this man leave this mortal existence and go off to heaven, (or wherever else he might end up residing) and it was not God’s will that this man continue living a mortal existence. Make note of this.
2. When it comes to prayer and its effectiveness, the bible has several things to say:
“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22)
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24)
"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20)
As you can see, Jesus was quite adamant in stating that you would receive whatever you ask for in prayer as long as you really believe that it will happen. At this stage we would be inclined to think that all of these unanswered prayers are due to the fact that the person praying doesn’t really believe. This however is not the standard Christian response.
The standard answer is this: “It must be God’s will”
You see, if the above biblical statements are true then you could pray for the annihilation of all Christians and, as long as you really believe it will happen, the prayer will be answered. Obviously this God will not answer any prayer that goes against his will.
“You prayed for a nuclear bomb so that you could destroy Utah. Sorry, it is not my will that Utah be destroyed, hence no nuke for you”. Sounds reasonable.
But here is the problem with the standard answer: It makes prayer completely redundant.
You pray to God to save your mother from her debilitating illness. You could pray all day, every day for the next million years but if it isn’t God’s will then it’ll never happen – regardless to your efforts. If on the other hand it is God’s will, then it would happen regardless to ever praying for it to happen. If it’s God’s will that your mother survives, that her time to go to heaven has not yet come, then she’ll survive.
All you have left is God’s will and not God’s will. This has the unfortunate side effect of not just reducing prayer to meaninglessness but everything else as well. You really want that job. You could pray for it but then it becomes a matter of God’s will. If it is God’s will that you get that job, you’ll get it whether you pray or not. If it is God’s will that you don’t get that job, sending them your C.V is a pointless endeavour – you’ll never get it regardless to how good your C.V is.
Of course, there will be a time when Christians find the typical excuse is unusable. If for instance I genuinely sat down and prayed: “I pray to you God that if you are there you let me know, give me a sign that I can understand as being from you, that I can come to realise that you truly do exist and want me to become a loyal believer” and nothing came from it, a Christian would be somewhat put off telling me it “wasn’t God’s will”.
The excuse now would have typically changed to the example I used earlier: That I wasn’t being serious enough. While I could go into great depth on the apparent inability of Christians to remain consistent with their excuses, I find myself instead more concerned with how one goes about measuring sincerity, (or ‘honesty’ as William Lane Craig puts it in Hard Questions, Real Answers).
To quote: “Tell Him honestly that, say, you doubt His existence, or His being Christ, or whatever doubt you may have. He cares for you and will help you.”
I actually attempted this. I said: “God, I don’t have a belief in your existence, I seriously doubt you’re there to even receive this message. If you are and truly care for me, kindly let me know that you are there in a way that I can comprehend”
It doesn’t get any more “honest” than that. What more can I do? This is typically where the Christian completely reverts back to his ‘will’ excuse.
“I don’t know why God didn’t respond but obviously it isn’t his will to do so right now. You must be patient”.
Apparently I must be patient until such time when God wills that I become a believer. You can hopefully see the problem with such statement. Again, everything has been reduced to meaninglessness, it’s simply God’s will and not God’s will.
We seem to be left now with two suggestions:
1. God’s will/not God’s will
2. Sincere/insincere
Both excuses are used by Christians, causing me once again to beg and plead for some consistency, although the former is used far more often but, without them even realising it, makes prayer utterly redundant. It would seem more appropriate to always adopt the latter view but then whenever the earlier biblical statements are mentioned, it is those very same Christians that deny it’s truthfulness.
I ask for some clarification. Is it the former or latter? If the former you must accept the inevitable consequences, if the latter then the reason your prayer failed was because you weren’t being sincere enough. I would like to finally get some confirmation on this issue and perhaps ask if anyone has access to a sincere-o-meter so that I know whether it’s worth praying or not.
