Prayer

It is easy to perceive prayer as the desperate clutching at straws by those confronted with crises which they are unable to handle, or desires they cannot satisfy.

A god who will change the order of creation to satisfy my personal preference would indeed be a strange contradiction – with the clear implication that the order of creation had not been very well planned in the first place. I think that is a pretty small god.

I was disturbed once as a young representative of the church to be asked by a cancer victim "Why me?" Implied in her question was the belief that her disease was some sort of divine retribution, but of course she could see no justification. The honest response is "Why not?" We simply do not understand why we suffer a great variety of difficulties and setbacks. We don't have divine omniscience; why should we expect to understand?

We are never-the-less encouraged to pray. Jesus provides a form of prayer (the Lord's Prayer) in response to a request for guidance, and at another time he says "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." (Matthew 21:22) It is instructive however to think about these before we leap to our preferred interpretation.

In the Lord's Prayer we are encouraged to make four specific requests: That God will bring his kingdom to fruition; that we will be fed (and presumably quenched and clothed as necessary); that our sins will be forgiven and that we will not be lead astray but strengthened against temptation. It is significant that only one of these is at all material – it relates to those daily provisions necessary for survival and continuing worship.

The quote from Matthew is apparently quite material in its application but it is repeated in other gospels rather differently. At Mark 11:24 we find "... whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." indicating a condition that we must believe that we have received it first and the belief will be satisfied; while at John 14:13 the words become "I will do whatever you ask in my name ..." and the same qualification is repeated at John 15:16 and 16:23. For John it is clear that the only things we may pray for and expect to have done are those things which Christ would have done.

It is interesting then that Paul sees it as necessary to work so hard to proclaim and spread the good news of Jesus. Surely he (or some other apostle, or indeed anyone) could have just sat back and prayed for the conversion of the gentiles and unbelievers everywhere – and, believing that God would deliver it and asking truly in Jesus name, be entirely confident that there was nothing more to do.

Well in case you hadn't noticed, it didn't happen. I am sure that the prayers were prayed with all due fervour, sincerity and conviction, but the goods were not delivered. I find this quite reassuring.

Once I had occasion to take issue with a bishop who wrote to the parishes of his diocese to ask the churches to pray for rain. He observed that the absence of rain had made life difficult for the farmers and that if we prayed as bidden then things would be better. Some of us however are unsure that the maintenance of European farming practices in Australia's irregular rainfall and fragile soils is a sustainable activity. We may equally observe that long periods of severe dryness are quite characteristic of the area. Perhaps it is not appropriate to be praying for a change in the Australian climate; perhaps a change in some of our practices might be more appropriate. Thus the drought may be seen as a reminder from God about the way things are and our need not to live in conflict with nature.

In this context the drought is not a curse but a blessing and an incentive or even an opportunity. The bishop would pray for this to go away. The same is true of course for all manner of other contingencies about which we may be tempted to pray; hence the saying that ‘every cloud has a silver lining'.

We have much to learn, and not least is the understanding that we do not understand. We seek the things we might pray for from the limited perspective of our own humanity, selfishness and greed. It is important that we do not elevate ourselves to the level of our own god by supposing that we are able to advise our maker as to the way things should be.

It is important that we are not vain in our prayers. The vanity which supposes that we know how to better arrange creation is not the way of Jesus, there is nothing humble about a prayer for some different order of nature.

Looking again at the Lord's Prayer we see that the things we are encouraged to pray for are not the material goals of our daily lives (unless we are reduced to merely survival) but rather we are to seek spiritual health and strength. These indeed we may expect to receive if we seek them. Similarly when we pray for things we can influence ourselves, such as understanding or the strength to deal with difficulties which we do not understand, we may again reasonably expect to find these prayers answered.

At the end of the day, the prayers we have answered depend on the power of the god to whom we address them. If we feel the need to address material requests to a god who needs this guidance from us we may expect answers with a corresponding level of potency.

My creator can answer prayers for a change in me, for the means to deal with a problem or for the insight to understand how God would have me respond to my situation. Sometimes these answers are found in ways that I do not expect, without any need for magic tricks or changes to the order of creation.

The changes that matter occur in me.

Peter Hoban

Original: July ‘99
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.geocities.com/phoban2000/

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