The Power of Prayer
October 12, 2007 by TJM Admin
Prayer. Your direct connection to God (unless you are Catholic, at which point you would go through your Priest). Two of the main reasons for prayer are communication with your deity and to bring your request to said deity. Can the power of prayer be measured? Yes. And no.
I am going to deal with the idea of prayer being used to request certain things of god. John 14:3 makes it clear that god is most certainly willing to hear your request. (In fact, if you use the secret password, it should come to fruition in order to glorify god.) How do we gauge the success rate of “prayer requests?”
The problem that you will encounter as you try to gauge the success of prayer is a pesky little thing known in Xtian circles as “God’s Will.” Let’s say for a moment that you have been estranged from a loved one for sometime. You pour your heart out to god for him to make a way for you to see this person again. Generally, the outcome is one of two things. It happens and we label this a success. It does not happen and we label this a failure, right? Wrong. If it does not happen, we chalk it up to, “Well, it’s god’s will that I not be reunited with this person. God has a plan.” (Of course, if it DOES happen, this is also labeled as “God’s Will.) Either way, it is considered a success! Amazing!!
Which brings up an old question. If everything happens according to the will of god, why pray about a damn thing? What exactly is it about your prayers that makes you feel as though you will change the will of god?
If you pray about anything that can have a measurable outcome, the best you can expect is a yes or no answer. When dealing with people of faith, you will find that even a negative answer to prayer is a positive one in some fashion.
Wanna prove me wrong on this? That would be easy. Let us now open our Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 14 verse 12-14.
12Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. 13And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
“Greater works than these…” “Whatsoever ye shall ask…” “If ye shall ask anything in my name…”
Pretty strong words in that promise to the believers. I personally would like to see someone ask, in Jesus’ name of course, for the annihilation of the AIDS virus. Certainly THAT would be a greater work that what he did during his time on this Earth. How about this, pray over a soldier retuning from Iraq who is missing his legs thanks to a roadside bomb. Ask that he regenerate those lost limbs.
Yeah, I didn’t think that you would want to take me up on that challenge…
I recall years ago when we were sitting at the death bed of the son of friends. He was 14 and dying of incurable brain cancer.
These people were “good people”. They went to church regularly, tithed and voluntarily did community services.
The whole community prayed with them for the child to be healed. We were praying non stop in prayer circles, as per schedule. The son promised his life to God, promised daily that he will give his life to God - he died nevertheless.
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Unlike Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, and all those other mythical Gods, the Goddess Google does answer prayers.
This from the Church of Google website:
“One can pray to Google by doing a search for whatever question or problem is plaguing them. As an example, you can quickly find information on alternative cancer treatments, ways to improve your health, new and innovative medical discoveries and generally anything that resembles a typical prayer. Ask Google and She will show you the way, but showing you is all She can do, for you must help yourself from that point on.”
For another view on answerless prayers, see the website Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
You’d be in my prayers if I made any.
Yours,
Spiffy Galoot
Theomicrist
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** no matter of fact will overturn a logically empty claim **
Despite John’s late non-synoptic rantings, you can’t presuppose that prayer reduces to the ancient doctrine of “do ut des.” Your making it too easy on yourself.
No theologian would concede your point. These guys have been around for 2,000 years. I’ll role play one for you:
## Jesus admonished his followers against prayer as asking-for-stuff — “consider the lilies of the field”, or prayer as public performance — “they have their reward.”
That ritualism too often substitutes for religion the Quakers made central to their practice of heeding the “Inner Light” — the equality of all believers, without clergy or any hierarchy, to be open to a divine presence here and now.
Getting rid of dead formalisms, prayer amounts to an alignment of a person’s intentions with “the will of God.”
Just how one explicates the concept of “God’s will” and how one would know it are other matters altogether.
But, we were concerned about the concept of prayer. And, I’ve given an answer to your question. ##
OK. Now, you can move on to your next question: Does everything that happens happen according to the “Will of God”?
Prayer, basically, is just a red herring. The word ‘prayer’ simply gets redefined until the action it points to is rendered into attitude adjustment.
And the game moves on the next level of making the so-called will of god as an unnecessary cause of events in the physical world.
A god whose existence could not be tested logically would simply be a nothing. Which has been the correct answer all along.
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
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T’is only an unanswered ritual…similar to the Toothfairy.
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