If Not for Answering Prayers, What Is God Good for?

            God does not answer prayers—at least not in the way we pick up a ringing phone or stop our car to help a neighbor push hers out of a snowbank. That, at least, was my conclusion in the previous blogpost. So, if God doesn’t answer prayers, what is God good for?

            This, of course, is a very contemporary sort of question, the kind that health and wealth preachers love to wallow in. Modern people want a pragmatic, sensible God who is useful, who blesses us and America (and Canada, too, maybe). God provides salvation in the hereafter, gives the church a reason for being (and a means of providing some with jobs and sometimes even power), and God is useful for unleashing passions that can overcome almost any political obstacle or tribal enemy and even inspire terrorist acts.

            I don’t like this sort of useful God. But if not good for answering my prayers, what is God good for? Why bother?

            Reflecting on this—I, and other theologians, have begun to imagine that God might not exist at all, at least in the sense that God is a person, place or thing as usually understood. I am trying on the idea that (perhaps) God is (certainly) not a substance or essence, a strong arm or a genie who snaps his (almost always “his,”) fingers. This explains all unanswered prayer, at least. There is no person, place or thing to do the answering.

            Instead, maybe God is a Spirit in the Vocative Case, a “weak force,” a cosmic plea hidden in a three-letter puff of air (interpreted, amplified, and corrupted by scripture and its authors), praying to us. God might be an inspiration (or better yet, an expire/ation) rather than a sovereign being who sits on a throne somewhere—even if such sitting is understood to be metaphorical.

            A Spirit in the Vocative Case? What might such a God be (leaving aside for a moment that by “Spirit,” I do not mean some “thing” one could put under a microscope or find with a P.K.E Meter)?

            Well, maybe a Spirit in the vocative case might be something like the call of the wild.

            Almost forty years ago I taught Jack London’s famous novel The Call of the Wild to my grade nine English class. You probably remember the story. A brave, well-trained, and strong dog, Buck, is stolen from his California home. Buck is shipped to Alaska to be a gold rush sled dog. He has a rough time of it. Ugly owners use, abuse, and starve him before he is finally adopted by a good man. This man, in turn, is killed by local Yeehat indians. So, Buck leaves human society behind and becomes leader of a pack of wolves.

            There is both much to commend this book and to condemn it. The Yeehat episode is particularly unsavory and racist. Ultimately, Buck’s life turns out to be a short course in Darwinian evolution, where Buck has to overcome technology and clubs, stupidity and ugly leaders of the pack in order survive. When the book opens, Buck is a pet dog, albeit a big one; by the end he has survived all thrown his way by civilized humans to find his true self. He has answered the call of the wild.

            What is this call? London never stops to define it, though he describes it. Buck “loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

            And again, “Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.” 

            This call of the wild, a vocative spirit in its own right, is not a being or substance or essence. It is not the cry of anyone one thing or even of many things. The wild itself, where the call originates, is also ever elusive, some “thing,” (maybe) that cannot be contained. We drag along our canteens and thread and needle repair kits and camp stoves in search of it, but thinking we have arrived, the wild is defeated by paths through the woods, campsites neatly arranged, and fire pits that have been in use (perhaps) for millennia. The wild recedes forever in the presence of our axes and knives and maps and the scraps of garbage we never quite manage to pack out. The closer we get to the wild, the more we realize that we cannot have it, or hold it, or pocket it, ever. And yet it calls.

            And for all the (literary) power of its call (powerful for some, perhaps, but not powerful overall) the wild is weak. It retreats under the onslaught of human tinkering. We cannot preserve it because even the act of preserving is to civilize, theorize about, and nurture—all actions inimical to the wild.

            God is as weak as the wild, and calls to us as the call of the wild did to Buck. God has no army (unless you count Swiss guards or terrorists or misguided nationalist troops), no place to lay his head, no kingdom other than the one that might be planted in your heart. God is weak, and God’s call is for a hope, a dream, an imagining, a utopia, a shalom that God has no power to bring to pass. Unless, perhaps, someone, some tribe, some Horton hears the God’s vocative case for such things. Maybe. And of course, when they hear, they haven’t even begun to understand. And when they understand and build, the thing called for is lost. Still, God doesn’t so much answer prayers as waft over us as a prayer of his or her own (or something’s or no thing’s own. Wouldn’t want to nail God down at this point!).

            Or, as Caputo writes, “God does not exist; God is a spirit that calls, a spirit that can happen anywhere and haunts everything insistently. I have found it necessary to deny existence in order to make room for insistence.”

Is Prayer Bogus?

            Here is the thing. Prayer—at least as imagined or practiced by most people—is bogus. And when they stop to think about it, people get this. In a roundabout way, even Christians understand this. When asked about unanswered prayer they shuffle their feet, scratch their heads, and wring their hands. And eventually they come up with explanations for unanswered prayer that feature mystery, inscrutability, or their own lack of faith—answers designed more to justify prayer while getting God off the hook than they are designed to make sense.

            Non-Christians, on the other hand, laugh. Facebook is full of their memes. A mouse praying, “And please don’t let the cat hurt me.”

Or Morpheus (looking inscrutable himself) saying, “What if I told you prayer doesn’t help disaster victims?” And, of course, there is the Jean-Luc Picard's famous meme, with apologies for the language, "Why the fuck are you praying to the same God who let this shit happen in the first place?"

             Of course, some people believe their prayers have been answered, at least occasionally. So, they keep at it. It looks to me, however, that what is really happening here is intermittent reinforcement. You will remember all about this from your Psych 101 class. A desired behaviour can be cultivated in someone even if that behaviour is only infrequently rewarded. So, for example, a door-to-door salesperson may learn to put up with many disinterested potential clients, and even the occasional slammed door, so long as the salesperson makes at least the occasional sale. Or again, someone may play the slot machines—and even lose a lot over time—in the hope of a big win, especially if that person is rewarded in the meantime with occasional small wins.

            Add in a few Bible texts that seem to suggest that if you pray long enough, with enough energy, and with great faith you will get what you want, and bingo, offering others your “thoughts and prayers,” becomes popular, low-risk pastime.

            I will not argue that there is no place for prayer. When I was in seminary, I was taught that the model congregational prayer, for example, should include adoration, confession and thanksgiving along with supplication and intercession. The Psalmists’ most common type of prayer was actually lament—sad dirges about everything that goes wrong.

            But people usually fast when it comes to confession or lamentation and choose for a steady diet of supplication and intercession instead. When it comes to prayer, if we’re not praying like soldiers in foxholes, we are usually praying like kids in a candy store. Most Christian prayer is mostly about getting what Christians want.

            In a further defense of prayer, though, my wife reminded me this evening that prayer is more than just getting in a word in with God. Prayer can be emotionally satisfying. For example, prayer with another person can be a very, very intimate way of opening your hearts not only to God, but to each other. Prayer alone in your closet can be very cleansing or centering or promote self-examination. And any prayer can make one feel as if he or she is coming into the presence of God—a holy moment, possibly—even if we have no idea what God really thinks of our prayers.

            I agree with her. Though praying for these reasons is not what most people aim for when they pray, and though these motivations for prayer are not often discussed in theologies of prayer, that does not mean they are not good reasons. They are.

            Ultimately, though, the issue for me is that people only intermittently get what they want out of prayer, and then fool themselves into believing that next time they may be more fortunate, all the while rationalizing that such beliefs are somehow consistent with (their favorite) Biblical texts. For me, it looks like prayer is a beautiful idea, like a perpetual motion machine, that just can’t do what Christians usually ask of it.

            And then, leaving prayer aside, I begin to ask the same questions about God in general. As a child, I memorized these words from the catechism. “Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and so rules them that . . . all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.”

            Really? What good father does not heal his children when he can, does not bless them with plenty, or pluck them from tsunamis, or encourage them with success when he can? Even Jesus said, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11).

            Really? Where is this Father?

            I don’t know, for sure. That is why I’ve turned to John Caputo’s ideas about “the weakness of God,” for answers, of late. You see, maybe the problem with prayer is not that we want good stuff, but that God just can’t deliver, regardless of what Jesus seems to suggest in Matthew 7.

            But more on that Father in the next post.

The Power of Prayer?

            When Irene and I were first married, we decided to pray for three items each night until those prayers were answered. We prayed that an older man who had left the church would return. We prayed that a distant relative who lost his faith would rediscover Jesus. We prayed for peace in the Middle East.

            We prayed in this manner, every night, for over twenty years. We did it earnestly and hopefully. In the end, though, the elder gentleman died without returning to church. The distant relative hasn’t changed his mind. And if you’ve been following the news about the Middle East this week, you will know that there is no peace in Israel or Gaza, Iraq or Syria, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Our prayers came up short.

            Still, many Christians insist that prayer has power. They talk as if prayer has the power to heal people, the power to convert people, the power to find you a husband or new job. For example, popular blogger Lorna Byrne wrote, just last week, "Prayer is such a powerful force. We underestimate it so much. Prayer can move mountains if we only would let it. If only you would realize just how powerful prayer can be, you would never feel hopeless." Unfortunately, the only mountains that I've noticed that have ever moved left landslides, death, and pain in their wake--all too commonly in places like The Philippines, where I used to live. 

            The power of prayer is also an Internet meme. A picture of a medical staff praying together showed up on my Facebook page this week, along with the words, "Type, 'Amen' if you believe in the power of prayer." More than 3,000,000 people "liked" this page, and hundreds of thousands had typed "Amen," as instructed. The picture showed medical staff praying together, intending, I think, to subtly undermine our perception of the power of medical science to heal. Or maybe it's suggesting that if even medical people feel the need to pray, so should you!

            Personally, I don’t think that the notion that prayer has power is actually scriptural. In the Bible, only God has power. Of course, in some stories, God responds to the prayers of the oppressed and acts. But sometimes not. Sometimes God extends the life of ill people, sometimes not. The thing is, in the Bible it is God who decides, and prayer is, of itself, powerless to make God act one way or another. Prayer isn’t a magical wand that can be used to manipulate God.

            And God is not a divine magician in the sky responsible for all the good or the bad that happens to people. In fact, humans are mostly responsible for their own problems—especially big ones, like climate change, war, or racism.

            Moreover—a little known fact—in the Bible, most prayers have nothing to do with asking for stuff. In the Psalms, for example—150 public and private prayers—the majority are prayers of lament—that is, these Psalms are public or private mourning before the face of God about how everything is going wrong. They may also ask for God’s embrace and comfort or aid along the way. But judging from Old Testament Israel’s history, they rarely got it as the nation stumbled from military sack to exile, to fumbling restart, to being conquered not once but two or three times again—all before Jesus’ birth.

            Still, the popularity of the idea that prayer has power—although it isn’t emphasized in the Bible—that idea has been around for as long as priests sacrificed children in order to ensure the growth of crops. And in recent times, the idea that prayer has power has received new life. In the late nineteenth century, the American Philosopher William James said that good religion should have cash value, that is, it should be good for something. James argued that there was no sense in believing if it didn’t get you valuable stuff. He said good religion is like a hallway that gets us to where we want to go.

            And so the idea developed, especially over the past 100 years, that religion is a pragmatic means to an end. Churches are thought of as smorgasbords meant to fill us with good things. For example, religion is how you get your morals—the morals you need to succeed. Religion is how you get healing. Religion is how you turn out good kids. It is a means to an end—an end that usually involves our happiness, our wealth, our health, or maybe even some good for the people I love—like aunt Minnie, who needs a kidney stone removed. The bottom line here, however, is that the notion that prayer has power is part of a bigger movement in North American religion—a movement that experiences religion as a pragmatic means to an end.

            But the truth about both religion and prayer is a lot more complex. For starters, even in the Bible, religion that is true always involves the wants and needs of our neighbours before our own, with an emphasis on mercy, piety, and justice for others rather than religion’s cash value for us. And prayer? Well, it is never portrayed in the Bible as something that protects Christians from the common lot they share with all other humans. In spite of all their prayers, Christians are not richer, do not live longer, and do not have healthier extended families or even fewer divorces than non-Christians.

            So, E. Griffith Jones, a contemporary of William James, once wrote, Christians should only pray "for the power to overcome the world in a spirit that is courageous as well as meek, militant against all forms of evil while profoundly thankful for what seems good in life."

The truth, of course, is that the Bible never promises us that our journey through this life is going to be a trouble free smorgasbord. Actually, the Bible speaks the opposite; of hurting people stumbling under the weight of a sin‑broken, groaning world. Jesus actually warned us that there would be persecutions and crosses to bear—and many Christians through the ages, and now Christians in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and Pakistan--many Christians know what he was talking about. Choosing, when the chips are down and we’re at the end of our rope—choosing for the other—for people we love, for neighbours, for principles of justice, for people on the margins—this is what the Christian life is about, even when such choices are costly, and even when such choices don’t have much cash value for us personally.

So what do we make of the Bible, when it says things like, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” On one level this does sound like if we pray for it, we’ll get it. It is dangerous, however, to take such texts too literally—especially when, in all of human experience, the literal sense of the text obviously isn’t true. Perhaps, in the context of Jesus’ whole life, what he means is that when we ask, what is given is divine guidance in scripture. When we search, what we will find—if not a personal experience of God—is the difficult path that Jesus walked and described in Sermon on the Mount—a sermon most Christians have no problem not taking literally! And if we knock, the door that is opened is the door to our own hearts, so that the Word lodged there will inspire us to compassionately enter into the suffering of others with enough mindfulness and energy so that we actually carry some of their pain and suffering away on our own shoulders. 

Søren Kierkegaard said, "prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays." That makes prayer a risky proposition, of course. Will you dare? 

Not Getting What You Expected

When I was in grade one I took a city bus to the parochial school I attended. My bus stop was in front of the Bank of Montreal at the corner of Geneva and Niagara. I had to cross a couple of busy streets all by myself to get to the stop, but I remember feeling pretty good about being street smart enough to meet the challenge.

In an era when my father took home barely forty dollars a week, the bus ride cost a nickel each way, 10 cents a day, 50 cents a week. Those nickels were precious. In spite of that, I was known to lose them from time to time. On those days, denied entry to the bus, my early-morning return home was not nearly as pleasant as my walk to the stop.

One morning, nickel lost, I decided that rather than go home and face my mother’s displeasure, I’d go to the Bank of Montreal for a loan. So at 8 o’clock in the morning I knocked on the big glass doors as loud as I could. Sure enough, a woman answered the door. I was a bit surprised to see that she had a mop in her hand, but I explained my need for a loan to her anyway. I asked her for a 10-cent loan and promised prompt repayment. She told me I had come to the right place. I followed her in, and she reached into a purse and gave me two nickels, one for the ride to school and one for the ride home.

I was a bit surprised that the nickels didn’t come out of a drawer behind the wickets. But when you’re in grade one, life is full of mysteries. The next morning, having raided the piggybank I kept on my dresser, I knocked on the bank door again. The bank lady showed up again, forgave my loan with a laugh, and sent me on my way. That afternoon, feeling quite pleased with myself, I spent the dime on a paper bag full of blackballs, three for a penny. A real feast.

In the years since, I’ve sometimes thought about that day. How often do we go to God in prayer like I went to that bank—as if we have to make some sort of a divine transaction? We pray for Aunt Sally, or even some personal crisis, intending that we’ll somehow make it up to God out of the little piggybank of good intentions we keep in a musty corner of our hearts.

But even for the spiritually mature, prayer turns out to be full of mysteries. You see, the one who hears us turns out not to be in the banking business after all. In fact, He may turn out to be a She. And She isn’t anything like what you expected, and She isn’t keeping tabs, and She isn’t even in the business of giving you what you want. However, the good news is, when you knock and the door is mysteriously opened, no matter what you ask for, or even if you’re tongue-tied, the main thing has probably already happened anyway.

Power of Prayer?

Power of Prayer?

This past week President Obama said that American policy for peace in the Middle East has always required Israel to accept her pre-1967 borders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu frostily rejected that position. But the exchange got me to thinking about prayer. You see, for as long as I can remember, my wife Irene and I have been praying--earnestly--for peace in the Middle East. We've been doing so, now, for over thirty years. If prayer's success is to be measured by getting the answers we want, our prayers have not been very successful.

On the other hand, some Christians are pretty sure God answers their prayers with exactly what they want. So, for example, Alan Wolfe humorously describes a women’s prayer meeting at a New York church. These women pray using Robert’s Rules of Order. They start the meeting by making sure that old business has been covered. They do this by going through the previous week’s prayer requests and checking off the prayers have been answered. Then the women move to new business. Here they share current prayer requests, adding them to their open checklist of as yet unanswered prayers. Wolfe notes that these new requests mostly involve healing for family and friends, personal finances, and real estate--personal health and wealth matters. Their prayer is a sort of churchly business technique. Given their presumed pipeline, I wish they would pray for peace in Palestine too.

The notion that prayer has power, however, is not, actually, deeply Biblical. God has power, and humans can certainly speak to God, through prayer. And he listens. But the idea that prayer itself has power--especially if prayer is done "correctly," that is, with enough faith, or enough people, or unceasingly, or with the correct blending of voice and actions as in "concerts" of prayer, is a peculiarly North American--and ultimately secular--idea. It comes from the notion that religion is a pragmatic means to an end. The idea was popularized by American philosopher William James, who spoke of religion having "cash value," and of it being like a hallway that gets us to where we want to go.

The truth, however, is much more complex. Prayer does not protect Christians from the common lot they share with all other humans. Christians are not richer, do not live longer, and do not have healthier extended families than non-Christians because of prayer. So, E. Griffith Jones, a contemporary of James, once wrote, Christians can pray "for the power to overcome the world in a spirit that is courageous as well as meek, militant against all forms of evil while profoundly thankful for what seems good in life." Or, as one of my favorite church confessions, the Heidelberg Catechism says, we pray mostly because it is the most important part of the thankfulness we can offer God for the opportunity to love both him and neighbor.

Originally published by Northumberland Today at www.northumberlandtoday.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3142259